Slashdot Mirror
Apple Applies For Rotary Mouse Patent
Dregs of Tar writes "According to an article at The Mac Observer, Apple has applied for a patent on an interesting new mouse idea. A rotary disc on the surface of the mouse can be pushed straight down as a mouse button, tilted forward or back to scroll vertically, and tilted side to side for horizontal scrolling. In other words, it's a rotary scroll wheel! Could it be so? Could we soon see Apple-branded, multibutton, scrolling mice?"
It's a rotary dial, like on the iPOD, or those old telephones.
Yeah, I have no idea what they were smoking when they came up wit that one. Although I'm sure all the apple zelots will crawl out of the woodwork to tell us why this is the greatest thing ever, and how having anything less would be like living in the stone age.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
More important to me than the four buttons is the rotary disc itself. The thumb wheel on the iPod makes for ridiculously easy scrolling through lists, long and small, with both fine control and super speed. That same ability on the desktop would be quite nice for:
- Navigating folders
- Any lists
- Video editing
- Brightness & Contrast settings
Pretty much any place a simple, unlimited movement with variable speed control is useful. In short, all over the place.I think a disc would be much more convenient than a scroll wheel. While the wheel consumes less surface space on the mouse, the limited range of motion of your finger makes scrolling long distances with it painful. However, I can trace circles on a surface with my finger with much less effort.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I work as a musician and producer and a one button mouse is a right pain when working on the Mac. Although I love OS X and Logic, I would be able to work much faster if Apple would provide some kind of scroll wheel so I could nip around documents much faster.
Although it is hard to know before seeing a real mouse I think the fact that this could be both Vertical and Horizontal will make it better to use than existing scroll wheels. I love the transparent Apple mouse so this would be an excellent improvement...
Now the next step is to get the music software to support it.... So hopefully Apple ownership will speed that up too...
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
Control system volume and navigation - launch apps - use for timeline and frame by frame manipulation in final cut pro - use for TRON tank turrets and Centipede!
A lot like this device: Shuttle Express You can see the similarities.
This is one reason the Mac is great - I have been able to use lots of devices that I have investments in; in lots of different ways. T68i & Romeo is just one example.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
At work I am having to use a free mouse that came with the computer system, despite my insistance that a decent mouse would add to productivity we have ended up with this completely and utterly useless peice of crap (which is why it's only a fiver I guess).
Ignoring the fact that as a normal mouse this is already pretty bad (sticky and clicky buttons and badly formed shape in the palm), that little blue thing on top? Pointless! I don't know what muppet designed this thing but it is utterly unusable, basically it is trying to be a trendy new type of scroll wheel or something. But, major point number one, it isn't a button and doesn't count as a third middle click. All it does is goes up and down, not like a wheel but just like a thing that you can push up or down or leave to spring back to the centre.
This might (might!) have been a decent design, although I'm still doubtful even then, but basically when you go to "scroll" down or up, no matter how careful you are just to tap it up or down, it almost always scrolls right to the very end of the document. They claim this is better than the mouse wheel somehow!
Anyway, slightly back on topic, if the Apple mouse is basically this but with horizontal scrolling too, then it's gonna be crappy. The Apple idea did conjur up in my mind the idea of a mouse with a track ball where the wheel is at the moment. Although perhaps complicating matters somewhat, it's also logical (in my mind, ha) so that there are two degrees of movement through the mouse (somewhat like moving your head whilst moving your eyes at the same time). This could (amongst other more pratical things) be pretty cool for doing the walking through Doom3 (for example) whilst at the very same time "looking" around freely using the track ball.
... I guess
Upgrade to links, they've even got graphics now!
Xoder: Proud Graphical Links user since 2 weeks after he upgraded to Linux
The previous sig has been removed due to
Probably will be used for Apple's "piles" concept.
Piles
Has no one mentioned that this patent goes almost hand in hand with the current Mac rumors regarding implementing "piles" of documents to replace, somewhat, file folders on the desktop. Think how easy it would be to shuffle through a "pile" of documents with this new mouse! Anyway, that's just rumor talk.