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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?"
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Hey, 1989 called... they want their browser back.
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
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
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
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
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
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The previous sig has been removed due to
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.
Probably will be used for Apple's "piles" concept.
Piles
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.
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.