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Apple Applies for a Touchscreen Gesture Patent
SuperMog2002 writes "According to an article in PC Magazine, Apple has submitted an application for a patent on "several methods of applying gestures to touch-sensitive input devices." Could there be a new form of tablet PC or PDA in Apple's future?"
Argh! Enough already with the "doing foo... with a computer!" and "doing foo... on a mobile device!" patents. You're not impressing anybody.
Has the tablet market come up with a way to deal with screen scratches? I think back to my trusty Palm IIIxe which after a few years suffered from horrible wear in the silk screen writing area. I'd hate to have dull spots on my computer screen where the GUI displays common elements.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Maybe I had it right when I came up with the iPod Touch, a while back.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Apple did some really great things with the Newton. They were a little too early, though. Competitors like Palm and Casio did them one better in marketing and ubiquity (probably price, too, if I remember). The Newton and eMate are great, but didn't make it.
Apple waited a bit before coming out with a portable music player (didn't make a CD player, and watched the first few MP3-Type players hit market). In this case, they did a great job of design and marketing. It's been a hit ever since.
Now, Apple has made patent application to do some touch-screen stuff. Knowing Apple, they could just be "thinking about something with touch screens", and might just be pro-active in patents. If they do a tablet, iTouchyPod (iPad?, iPodTouch?, iTouch?, touchIPod?), they're likely to learn lots of lessons from the tablet-pc and touch-screen world and do something neat.
A Passionate Independent Musician
What exactly does this have to do with my rights online?
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
B&W, Palm, etc. have already been mentioned as having prior art. Honestly, this is why I hate corporations like that. But I think there's another party who also has prior art on such a thing. I mean, these kinds of patents are just stupidly ridiculous.
yeah, but you had to use a pen there! http://www.fingerworks.com/ is probably more like what they were considering, except now there's a screen under it, so you pick up on the icon itself, instead of moving the pointer and then doing a pick up motion! *I haven't read the article*
Uhh dude... i don't think anyone wants to know what you are doing with your palm right now..
As far as I can make out, each claim specifically mentions a multipoint touchscreen. Unlike the touchscreens normally used in PDAs, it can register pressure at several points simultaneously. Furthermore all described gestures need the screen to be touched at several places at once. But since the patent mentions virtual controls, I wouldn't really describe the interaction as a gesture. Gestures typically are not performed on a control.
Please take that into account when you try to come up with prior art.
Palms have had this for awhile have they not? Not handwriting recognition - you could, say, drag the pen from top to bottom and the backlight would come on.
Palms only recognize one point at a time. The patent covers multi-point gestures, like (as described), zooming in on a point by simultaneously selecting the point with one finger and using another to control the zoom.
The post title, summary, and the article itself all make it sound like Apple is patenting all touch-screen gestures, but that's not what the patent application itself says.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
What the heck am I doing on my Palm right now?
Using a one-point stylus. The patent application is for gestures using multiple points simultaneously. You can't do that with your Palm. Also note that it isn't a patent on multi-point touch screens or touch pads, which already exist, but on specific types of interfaces using them.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
one of the new patents will include "navigating interface via tongue", cause we all know apples aqua UI is sooo good you want to lick it?
*runs away and hides*
Music, Games, Media Art and Programming
Not to mention the numerous Nintendo DS games that have this feature
The DS has, as far as I know, a single-point touch screen. The patent application is for gestures using multiple points. I don't have a DS, so tell me: can you touch the screen in two different points and have two different inputs register? Or does the cursor "leap" like most touchpads?
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Honestly, I wish people would quit saying "Apple/Microsoft/Google/FooCorp is evil because they applied for patent X", even if the patent is for something really obvious (like this one seems to be) or stupid. Given the current legal climate, companies are forced to obtain patents like these so they can defend themselves against (usually smaller) companies that would otherwise get the patents later on (or dredge up old, semi-related patents) and then bring lawsuits. Save the complaints for companies that actually abuse patents (Eolas comes to mind), and the USPTO and the legal system that allow this **** to continue. Also, to the people who keep pointing out "prior art"... please note that this patent application is for a MULTI-POINT touch interface.
chown -R us ~you/base
The touch screen reacts the same whether I use one finger or two.
That's because it's a single-point screen. Multiple-point touch screens (i.e. the only kind referenced by the patent application) behave differently.
The patent is vague
You've already demonstrated that you haven't read any of it. The very first claim specifies "touch sensitive device having a multipoint capability".
Besides, what's Apple going to do then? Sue the priest...
Now you're demonstrating that you are being willfully stupid.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Plus, I believe that prior art is not subject to copyright law, so things like the Palm Pilot, the Nintendo DS, and other things are exempt.
Not that I agree with Apple doing this. Part of the reason that they do this is probably because of their past when they got totally screwed over by MS, and they just don't want it to happen again.
And Sony has no right to govern the contents or usage of anyone's computer, whether that person is stealing music or not.
www.linuxpenguin.net
Vista also has touch screen guestures in the current beta2 builds.
Funny this article come up today. I have been playing with the touchscreen tablet UI in Vista all day.
If you're talking literally about handheld PCs (as in PC clones), then Atari's Portfolio predates the Newton series by about four years. (And the Newton certainly wasn't a PC clone anyway!)
Apple was the first to make a market viable application-centric pocketable computer design. Psion's MC400 a few years before that demonstrated the principle, but was poorly marketed and wasn't pocketable. The other handheld computers were, for the most part, still in the stage where applications needed to be built and so put a large amount of concentration on the programmable side of the machines rather than the applications. And in the end, it was a viable design, but it was Palm, not Apple, who profited from it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Just to correct some people here, multi-touch pads already exist and work very well:
http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php
Saying that Apple bought fingerworks may not be enough for folks who don't know what that is. Fingerworks made a series of keyboards and other devices that allowed users to use 'gestures' for commands. The surface was flat, like a touchpad, so there were no keys, which threw many for a loop. A gesture would be, say, four fingers (all except the pinky) sliding together on the right surface of the keyboard to 'Save'. Gestures were programable, and many geeks loved the extensability. The keyboards were difficult to use, especially relearning typing without tactile feedback. But once you got it, these keyboards were *extremely* powerful. E.g., no mouse, since mousing is taken care of with gestures.
About a year ago, FingerWorks was bought out by some other company, that most now think is Apple. Many of the FingerWorks users are mad because they can no longer purchase new keyboards, or even get support for older keyboards that break. Apple had better think of something briliant to pacify this angry mob of **hundreds**.
**Disclamer -- typed with a FingerWorks TouchStream keyboard.