IMHO multi-touch is really overrated in significance. The only multi finger gesture I use is pinch zoom and it’s like once a week. If that was a widget or triple tapping or something, I wouldnt notice.

The improvements to touch that made it magical was the super responsive typing and momentum scrolling and it’s all just one fingered.

Super responsive typing actually does depend on multitouch, because if you type fast then you will have multiple fingers touching different keys at the same time.

It's a stretch to call that multi-touch. The key press events are still a serialised stream of single finger touches. When people have spoken about multi-touch features and patents they have invariably been referring to chords and gestures.

From the app standpoint it is, but not from the actual implementation algorithm.

I owned a fingerworks keyboard in 2003. The multi touch and gestures were amazing. And it was physically painful to type on. Try touch typing on a solid surface for any length of time. Fingertip bruises are no fun. The company mysteriously vanished shortly after announcing an after market multitouch keyboard for the iBook...

That's the company that was purchased by Apple, as described in the book I linked to above.