Only minutes after my Snow Leopard install did I notice the little icon at the top right corner that was unfamiliar to me. After a quick "click", I then saw show character viewer and show keyboard viewer. The keyboard has been in Leopard, but never turned on by default. There has been some screen shots of this keyboard before, but to put it as a default in a release of a Mac OS is something entirely unusual. So far there is no need for such a virtual keyboard unless you were planning to release a new touch screen device in the near future. The other hint toward a tablet other than the loads of stories from many reliable sources is the significant size reduction of the OS. The total OS install when not installing the language packs was just over 4GB. My last Leopard install clocked in at just over 12GB. Why would you need a slimming of an OS in an age of almost infinite storage? A tablet or similar device must be coming. The question is when. See the image of the resizable keyboard after the jump.
