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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?"
Sounds to me like it's just like a trackball, but for scrolling
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Since quite a while IBM has some mice featuring a scroll/track-point device.
Although not really a 'rotary disc', it *is* a device which can be pushed as a button, and can be pushed/tilted in all directions for scrolling..
(See this one for example)
Sorry Apple, too late....
Cool. A mouse with a trackball on top of it.
I think someone should make a mouse with a keyboard on top of it. That way you can type without every taking your hand off the mouse.
From the people with a 1-button mouse, who then moved to a NO-button mouse, we now have a mouse with an extra 4+1 directional button?!?1
it can become very confusing for the computer illiterate crowd. Ever tried to explain the difference between left and right click ?
But for power users, it's a different story. I have a thumb button on my mouse that I programmed to be the ENTER key, and it's be hard for me now to do without.
My point is, how can you design a mouse that is universal and "upgradeable" at the same time ?
Apple's approach of the problem sounds interesting though, and raise a question about what will the future of pointing devices be.
Ok, let's just read that article one more time: It describes a mouse with a DISC, not a TRACKBALL. Also, I can't see any hint of the disc serving as a second mouse button in the patent description. This being Apple, that disc thingy will probably be the only control-element on the mouse. One thing that the article itself seemed a bit confused about, was whether the disc was ROTARY (i.e. something you rotate, as on an old telephone) or just a kind of cross-button with 5 directions (horizontal, veritcal, and down).
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.
here is a link.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
There are a few PCS phones that use this type of button for navigation.
I think the idea would be that if you're moving the mouse you might use it as a button, but you might use for fine control over things like paning.
Seems like car stereo's have had these sorts of controls for a while, and flight sticks, and fighter planes before that. I would hope the patent is more for their particular implimentation rather than, "Look! We took a button off device x, and hooked it into device y. No one else can combine chocolate and peanut butter without paying us first!"
But I can't be bothered to RTFA, its sunday for christ's sake.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
When the mouse was new people weren't used to using them, and Apple feared that more than one button would confuse people. It would be more familiar to do it like a keyboard where you have one key, but holding down a modifier key you can switch the functionality of they key. Apple went with this design simply for familiarity in concepts..
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
This would be a great tool for AV editing... I'm thinking Jog Control /w mouse capabilities... New macs already come with a decent entry level suite of tools, why not adapt the input method to bolster your strengths...
now if they could just get it integrated with the Logitech 3D mouse, use two and a la Instant Minority Report Action!
--
While the new Apple patent sounds like a good idea, I have concerns that if Apple doesn't design that unusual button correctly you're going to end up with a lot of unintended screen scrolling.
Given that later releases of MacOS 9.x and the current MacOS X releases support the full functionality of the two-button mouse with scroll wheel natively (e.g., compatible with USB-port mouse pointers from Microsoft and Logitech), Apple should just "bite the bullet" and get Logitech to build a scrolling mouse that complements the shape of the current Power Macintosh boxes and iMac machines.
Yes. Ergonomic studies show that a one-button mouse is easier to use than a two-button mouse.
It takes a small, but significant amount of time for the brain to process which finger to move to press a corresponding button.
Two+ button wielding mice jockeys, will, of course, spout on eternal about the increased efficiency of two+ button mice, and they will be correct for a limited set of scenarios (just like the CLI guys are right for specific cases). However, for general use, one-button mice are faster (do some stopwatch tests) and less error-prone than their two+ button counterparts.
Apple is all about ease of use, and that's why they continue to stick with one-button mice with their stock systems and will likely do so for the forseeable future.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Radial discs for user input are not exactly a new idea; that said, they didn't take off in earlier incarnations.
Anybody remember Intellivision?
The #2 competitor to the Atari 2600, the Intellivision had a controller with a disc very similar to that described on this patent application (see the picture shown at the above link). The radial dial controller (along with a phone-like keypad and a couple 'action' buttons) was used rather than a joystick or a mouse.
The Intellivision controller is described at the bottom of this page, and the problems with it are aluded to in this video game history, notably that:
Unfortunately, the control discs are not a huge hit with players, along with the fact that their flimsy design leads to frequent controller breakdowns. Hardwired right into the system, this becomes a big problem for owners who have to slog the whole machine back to the dealer for repair.
I'd imagine Apple will avoid these mistakes; mice aren't integrated and I don't see why they can't insure higher quality. Personally, I found the disc an acceptable substitute for a joystick after playing with it a bit at a friend's house.
So I think there's a fair bit of prior art. I searched for 5 minutes for Intellivision and Coleco patents and found it described in
Patent 4,486,629, 4,470,012, 4,462,594, and 4,439,648. I didn't see that prior art cited in the Apple patent.
That said, the new patent does A) control scrolling actions rather than main-locus-of-control actions, and B) as the patent application says, "pressing down on the disc for clicking does not cause the disc to rotate" which seems like an advance to me over the Intellivision controller.
I guess the question comes down to: how well is the usability testing going?
--LP
P.S. For a Slash-based forum on post-PC UI issues, see Nooface.
That you had to lose your job at 9AM on a Sunday morning. You may think it's cold hearted, but myself and John decided that it would be best to give you a chance to hit the unemployment line on Monday morning. A fresh start, if you will. Don't worry, we cleaned out your desk and hired and trained your 22 year old replacement while you were on vacation. You, my fine feathered friend, are fired. And I'm going back to bed.
here
Looks like this will bring a tighter focus on mac gaming too, finally! All you PC-ers, prepare to get fragged!!
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Speaking as an editor, if all of my clips start turning into dead people, I'm gone, FCP or no.
Would this system allow editing of video that *didn't* implicate you in a violent crime?
Why does this just sound like a hat-switch that you find on joysticks? Of course it's a neat idea to plop it onto a mouse. Personally I'd rather have one under my thumb. I think a lot of people are used to using hat controllers that way. Hell, how many FPSes on the PS2 are best played by using the analog sticks with your thumb? Same thing here.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Have you seen Trust's product lineup? A friend of mine bought this monstrosity from them the other day that had -- I kid you not -- the usual two buttons, two scrollwheels (one horizontal, one vertical; one was also a button), and another two buttons on the sides. That's a total of nine buttons, folks (counting the wheels as two buttons each). The Windows driver was about 60Mb.
It is a regular joke amongst our friends that it is only a matter of time before Trust made a mouse with a trackball on top of it, and that will be rapidly followed by a joystick mounted on top of a trackball atop a mouse. In the version 3, they'll add a four-way view switch button to the joystick and another half-dozen buttons to the bottom of the mouse. Version 4 will probably be wireless and integrate a toaster, oven and water cooler into the base of the charging cradle. You heard it here first.
You win again, gravity!
Power users can tell such simple things apart, such as left and right click. I did tech support for sometime and still do for my parents and close family friends. Most of them are mid 40's to mid 50's and it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to get those people to use two fingers, one for each button and to tell which "click" to use. It is beyond aggravating. I'm sure plenty of other frustrated tech support types can sympathize with you as well bud.
-Daedalus
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
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
Okay -- 2 things.
First, the joke -- the apple mouse wasn't designed for lemmings... it was designed for Lode Runner, airborne (with RealSound!) and Dark Castle.
Second, and trust me on this, when Apple came out with a Mac with a mouse, it wasn't for blind follwers... it was like WTF is this? Where is the command line? Apple even packaged an audio cassette w/ the first macs to tell you how to use the mouse -- because the concept was new for 'consumer' computers.
I would think that it would be fairly stright forward to write a jitter sensitivity control so that when the mouse was moving, presumably smoothly and relatively quickly, that the widget would have one context, and another when it was bouncing over a small range of points near each other. What would that annoying result be? I suspect an oh-no-second or so of lag between when you start to move the mouse, and when the cursor moves on the screen, with an additional slider in the driver window.
Even though, I'm a pc user and am not particularly fond of macs, apple shouldn't bite the bullet. Three things might happen: The market will embrace it and there will be a couple of clones, it'll be revolutionary and people will wonder how we ever made toast without it or why we ever drank beer out of bottles, or someone will collect unemployment. Either way, I don't see how any of those things are bad for me.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Didn't Toshiba do it first?
Now more and more laptops seem to have both a nipple and a trackpad, like Dell ones (presumably so that they can pick up more sales from both camps).
Personally I like my NEC, with a trackpad + a scroll slider between the L and R buttons. Indespensable once you get used to it. (Just like a wheel mouse, who wants to go back now?)
Beep beep.
Ergo, the more buttons on your mouse, the faster the computer crashes.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
My poor brain is confused, and trying to read the patent application itself didn't help. It's rather dense. Nevertheless, paragraph 37 of it says . Note that this says horizontal or vertical. So that implies a rotary dial as a straight replacement for a wheel; OK, I can deal with that.
Paragraph 60. however, says and suddently it can do 2d scrolling, which a 1D wheel certainly can't. What gives? The diagrams page hates Galeon so I can't look at fig 10. Can someone shed light on this?
As for the ergonomics, I'm a little dubious. Isn't side-to-side motion of a finger actually quite bad for you? I though fingers had essentially one dimensional joints and were designed to move up and down and not much else. Roatating my finger in a 1-inch diameter circle feels a little uncomfortable to me. I do see their point about having to pick the finger up off a scroll wheel all the time, though; I've always had that problem with Sony jog dials, too.
You win again, gravity!
You'd have to put two next to each other so you can coordinate the movements, but such a technique would allow you to scroll around a big screen quickly and accurately after a few minutes of practice.
/. nickname is quite fitting. :-)
You mean, like this?
Your
~Philly
I think while the new Apple mouse design borrows some of the concepts from the Intellivision controller, I worry the disc will end up being too small in size (especially given Apple's penchant for building relatively small-sized mouse pointers), which will cause unintended scrolling, especially if you have big hands and/or fingers.
This isn't like the iPod, where the disc controller is fairly large and easy to manipulate even with larger-sized fingers.
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
Doesn't Mac know that everybody uses touch-tone now? These young wipper-snappers wouldn't know what to do with a rotary mouse.
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
The Apple / Bandai Pippin Controller had something similar to the trackball you are speaking of and it was/is the easiest to hold, most comfortable, game controller I have ever used. In fact, I use it with my Mac still -- with the ADB adapter and the USB adapter.
I would love for Apple to bring this down to wireless bluetooth mouse size. For now I like to use a Logitech Trackman Marble due to the fact I hate moving mice on the desk and the pippin controller.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
A patent from a high-tech company that isn't some lame attempt to steal ideas from the past and/or something that was so obvious to everyone else that no one ever thought to patent it. I am so friggin sick of patents that blatantly try to subvert progress in the name of ripping off the community that this one from Apple actually comes as a breath of fresh air. I have no idea how useful this device will be but at least it appears no one else has ever built one before.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
It's called a hat switch. It's on lots of nice joysticks to control the direction you're looking. I've been after one to be put on a good mouse forever. If Logitech would put one on one of their corded MX models, I'd be in heaven.
There is definitely prior art. Take a look at the mouse component of this Saitek mouse/action pad bundle.
May we never see th
Anyway, here is a link to patent application 20030076303. You can see the images from there also.
You make some excellent points. I've begun to think that general Macintosh opinion among the public lags about five years behind the reality. How many Mac users have heard non-Mac users rant about the fruit-colored iMac, a computer that's been out of production for years? On the other hand, even tech geeks in general are largely unaware of the BSD underpinnings or free iApps... all stuff that's come along largely since the advent of OS X and makes the Mac of greater value to geeks and casual users alike.
My guess is that in the year 2007 or 2008 the public will be saying "Did you know that Apple has a server box?" or "Did you know those new Apple laptops use 802.11g?" or "Hey, OS X shunts all the quartz compositing off to the video card! That's a neat idea".
I, for one, am tired of having to entertain anti-Mac arguments from people who are well-versed in the latest Wintel situation but haven't checked in on Apple in more years than you can count on a single hand.
www.macgamer.com
Thing One: This idea sounds like the iPod interface placed on a mouse. Cool idea, if true,
Thing Two: Apple has had a number of reasons for sticking with one-button mice, as mentioned elsewhere: They're easier for novices to use, they're easier and cheaper to make, and they offer third-party manufacturers a revenue opportunity. Don't forget the "bad old days" when Apple made nearly everything itself. It caught hell for that until it adopted USB and VGA in '97-98. An Apple two- or three-button mouse would piss off vendors it doesn't need to antagonize.
What? You want text to add to that glorious title?
Stupid lame filter.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Like flight sim joysticks have, with the sole difference being that it's shaped differently.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
There was an old controller available for the Super Nintendo that used this exact type of device instead of the traditional 4-way pad.
I've used an IBM mouse with a trackpoint-like controller in the middle that can scroll horizontally and vertically. Isn't that prior art? Or does making the trackpoint round make it somehow innovative and unique? I don't think so, but I've heard of worse approved by the USPTO. r4lv3k
Could we soon see Apple-branded, multibutton, scrolling mice?
I'd be happy to just to see an Apple-branded, multibutton mouse.
</obapplemousecomment>
(yes, I know they're available, but all display-model Macs I've seen to date have at most one mouse button, and some hardly seem to have a button at all... in other words, refer to my
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
It's closer to a combination of the two. Pushing DOWN on the wheel in any of the 4 cardinal directions scrolls. Pushing straight down would be another function, and spinning the wheel clockwise or counter-clockwise woulld be two other functions (scrolling through links, fields, cursor movement, etc.). And with the proper tension adjustment, I can't see slippage being a problem. That same tension adjustment would prevent rotary movement when pushing down. It looks like a rather ingenious design to me.
...and read "Apple: Apple Apples"? Oh well...
It's also fair to point out that without a source on that observation, this is just your opinion. I know a ton of Mac people - practically all of my friends - and they love the optical mouse. There's more than a 'few high-up (?) die-hard UI (?!?) people' (that statement doesn't make any sense at all actually, it's not a UI issue, and who's high up? Some nameless Apple industrial designers?)
I've done extensive user testing for multi-button apps before. The earlier poster who mentioned the difficulties getting older computer-illiterate people to understand and adapt to these conventions is right - it is nearlyimpossible. It's very easy to forget, but when you've spent coutless hours in a UI lab watching Random Person stumble through what you consider to be the most trivial tasks... trust me. There's a very, very good reason for the 1 button mouse.
And not just one - an oft-overlooked fact is the right/left dominance thing. Lefties like to use their mice on the left side of the computer. It's important that your primary 'click' is your index finger. Swapping mouse sides can potentially swap your primary click - which you can re-map of course (computer expert that you are), but then your manuals are all wrong when they say left-click, right-click, etc.
Mac mice have never had an issue with left/right-handedness. (Also note that many creative types are right-brained, thus left-handed. This is important to some.)
The point is that you should *not* have to run out and drop *more* money to get another peripheral to make your spangling new Mac not suck. Apple had a (tenuous) reason to not include a second button...up until they introduced context menus triggered by *control-clicking*. At this point, they're just being stupid.
Oh spare me. The cost must be in the neighbourhood of $5, a vanishing percentage of the overall expense. The Apple keyboard is forced on you too, no one seems to complain about that. It makes more sense to me to include the simplest mouse by default from the original company, and people can drop the $30 for a multibutton mouse if they feel like it.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
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.
Why is everyone here so negative? Horray for Apple for getting some new stuff out there! Who cares if you guys don't like it? Why don't one (or all of you) go out and invent your own makes-everybody-happy ubermouse?
! !!!!
Why am I even bothering to log in anymore? All I do is read complaints from people who are never satisfied. Well, if you can't beat 'em, join em.
Check this out...Apple's idea sucks! Screw those punks and their sell-out style! Rotating disc? How 'bout rotating this! *grab grab*. 'Scuse me while I go use another companies' third-party POS mouse before I even see the finished Apple product! I'm gonna switch to Linux 'cause OS X is too pretty and I want a OS that is ugly and hard to use so I can look cool in front of all my friends... aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrghfggghggurgle...ppphhhlphhhpppt
Warm fuzzies, everbody! Not cold pricklies! Jesus.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
Basicly a jog-wheel that functions as a d-pad; which means 2 analog directions and 4 digital.
The real problem here is implementing this or any other multidirectional system on a mouse so it's not cumbersome, especially if Apple plans to keep the "no-button" design.
Too many zeros, not enough ones