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iPod/iPhone Nano With Touch Panel?

Posted by Zonk on from the they-feel-you dept.

Staska writes "A new Apple patent filing shows new directions for Apple's touch interface design. For smaller devices like iPod Nano, touchscreen interface may not be feasible — the screen is just too small for touch operation. According to the patent, Apple can still make full screen iPods and put a touch panel on the backside of the device with transparent controls on the front screen. In addition to iPod, patent filing also describes controls for the phone. ZDNet even thinks that this patent can hint about future touch interfaces for all Apple products."

35 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. And the best part... by Anarchysoft · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...is that calls from the doctor can restart your pacemaker.

    --
    Hax-fu?
  2. Excellent ... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... now I'll own an iPod that I can scratch it to sh!t on two sides.

    1. Re:Excellent ... by Mooga · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm just worried that the full touch screen would make it much harder to use.
      I often change songs and volume on mine by simply feeling where I am on the wheel. With the whole thing being a touch screen I would have to pull my iPod out publicly whenever I wanted to do anything as simple and turn down the volume.
      As obvious as that is, it would be a real pain.

      --
      ~ Mooga
  3. How small do we need? by identity0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really, how small do we need to make these things, anyways? Even in Japan, where mini=cool, there's a limit to how small phones get. Maybe it's the battery requirements, but I think that past a certain point, the "cool" factor gets outweighed by the fact that you can't show off a device you can't see. The current nano iPods are smaller than any phone I've seen, and I wonder just how many people actually want something that size.

    1. Re:How small do we need? by Ucklak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wait until the power requirements do not need a physical battery in the device but somewhere on your person like your wallet that powers your clothing grid that also powers personal devices that are connected by touch to you.

      --
      if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
    2. Re:How small do we need? by cadu · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Even in Japan, where mini=cool, there's a limit to how small phones get. Ha!

      Excuse me but i think you're talking about Japan ironically, or a different place on the world with the same name (could it be? :P)

      I live here and the cellphones aren't tiny as people think (the technology nation, the anime world, or whatever) , they're *HUGE*, they like things packed with features (useless or half-baked features that could be done with better standalone devices anyway, but this is the japanese mentality) not small (at least in the cellphone world)...

      Even now there's an ongoing wave of 'slim' cellphones, yes, they're ridiculously slim (to the point you ask yourself where they put the battery pack) , yet they're like a Big Foot on the front...

      i'm still searching for a small cellphone that only talks to other people and has a phone book, period.

      ps: as of features: my cellphone has internet/e-mail/sms/mms/3megapixel external camera/1 megapixel inside camera/a lot of buttons on the side/a screen that flips 180 degrees/..... and the thing is as thick as a brick. if you get the models with TV reception (both digital and analog) it'll still be like 3mm thicker than mine... sucks!

      ps2: if you think my opinion is false, compare it with devices like sony's PS3 :)
    3. Re:How small do we need? by SuchiRu · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wrong about the Japanese phone market. Japan doesn't care about it being small. They care about them being full of options and thin. Big screen, lots of programs, high megapixel camera, tv, mp3 player phones are all I see on the train in Tokyo, but the thing is they are thin. I mean REALLY THIN. Japan currently has the thinest flip phones in the world. I think they are DOCOMO phones. Don't feel like looking it up. The point is that thin is what I want. I want it wide and thin. Don't care about small. Learn more about countries before you spout generalizations about a community. *The opinions of a Japanese Studies Major.*

  4. ALL? by Jerry+Rivers · · Score: 3, Informative

    "ZDNet even thinks that this patent can hint about future touch interfaces for all Apple products."

    Somehow I just don't see the practicality of having a high-end workstation with a touch screen. All consumer products maybe, but not professionals products.

    --
    The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
    1. Re:ALL? by vux984 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't see the keyboard/ mouse/ tablet/ etc going away. But why not supplant them with touch screens?

      Certain activities in photoshop and illustrator would be SOO much more intuitive and easy with a touch screen. Tablets are great, but even they can't beat just drawing the curve you want right on the screen.

      The more UI options the better.

    2. Re:ALL? by mrchaotica · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A Wacom-style digitizer screen that you use with a special stylus (as seen on most Tablet PCs) is not the same thing as a touch screen that you use with your finger (as seen on most PDAs). The latter would be almost useless for Photoshop, especially compared to the former.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    3. Re:ALL? by 26199 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Touchscreen is irrelevant. It's multitouch that's the big story.

      Apple's multitouch technology came from Fingerworks (allegedly!) and I can tell you with great certainty that for a professional computer user, multitouch is the way to go. The Fingerworks Touchstream vastly better than the standard keyboard/mouse combination for programming; and I expect the advantages would be greater still for graphic design, CAD, etc.

      It's all about 1) removing the need to alternative between keyboard/mouse -- the freedom gained is huge; 2) utilising considerable extra input bandwidth from chords, gestures, hot-switchable layouts; and 3) reducing injury and stress through zero-force typing.

      It's the future -- at least, I hope so.

  5. Too small for a touchscreen, so it uses a panel? by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Funny

    No telepathic UI. Less screen space than a Nano. Lame.

  6. Prediction: All touch by Chairboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Prediction: Within a year, all Apple products with displays will have multi-touch. Laptops, external monitors, iPods, the whole shebang. Sure, most people won't use it all in the beginning. The UIs we have today aren't set up for it, neither are our office spaces. But Apple will bet the farm and just make is a Standard Feature on the bet that while the demand doesn't exist NOW, it'll appear out of whole cloth once it's so ubiquitous.

    They did it w/ USB. They did it with mice.

    "Blah blah greasy fingerprints on monitors" Yeah, anyone with half a brain can think of 10 reasons why this is dumb. But it's the crazy guy in the back of the auditorium who's going to figure out how to get rich off of it, and in doing so will make the standard transition from 'crazy wacked out goofball' to 'eccentric visionary'.

    1. Re:Prediction: All touch by mblase · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Blah blah greasy fingerprints on monitors" Yeah, anyone with half a brain can think of 10 reasons why this is dumb

      The biggest reason, of course, is cost. The bigger the touch screen, the faster its cost goes up.

      On the other hand, I can see the value of a small touchscreen under the actual display for lesser functions, like iTunes controls or Dashboard widgets.

    2. Re:Prediction: All touch by prockcore · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They did it w/ USB. They did it with mice.


      But they failed with ADB, NuBus, Firewire, ADC, and PCI-X to name a few. Apple has far more misses than hits when it comes to introducing the "new standard".
    3. Re:Prediction: All touch by Tom · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Which is par for the course. Name a company that had more hits than misses.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    4. Re:Prediction: All touch by catch23 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, but all those are hardware interfaces. User interfaces are something Apple knows a little better than hardware interfaces that usually need acceptance from other electronics manufacturing industries as well.

    5. Re:Prediction: All touch by Jarjarthejedi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Google...badam chish!

      Don't get it? Hits? As in, 100,000,000 hits for 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1...badam chish!

      --
      There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
    6. Re:Prediction: All touch by blueturffan · · Score: 2, Funny

      Firewire is a failure?

    7. Re:Prediction: All touch by MBCook · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ADB was Apple's standard, NuBus was tied directly to the processor so it wouldn't have worked on x86. FireWire is doing quite well. ADC was... probably a mistake. PCI-X was available on PCs and probably would have won had PCIe not come around.

      But USB had been around for YEARS when Apple put it on the iMac. But because they were willing to take a chance on it, they made it big. Before the iMac it was tough to find USB peripherals. Within a year they were everywhere. PCs would have held on to the PS2 ports and serial ports (which I kinda miss) for ever (see: floppy drive).

      But many companies have these kind of things. Remember IBM's attempts to lock people back in with their other bus (can't remember off the top of my head) around the XT timeframe? Remember EISA? How about Vesa Local Bus? The PC industry has seen it's share of weird little standards that got some traction but were never huge.

      As for the grandparent, I can see he point. I have my little Mac next to my development workstation all day and I listen to music and do little bits of surfing on it. To be able to reach over and tap a big control on screen to pause iTunes or go to another song or change volume would be nice. As it is, I just tap the space bar, use a key combo, or use the little volume keys on my laptop. I can also see using it to easily open files (tap an icon in finder, etc) when I just want to show someone a picture or do something like that real quick. It won't replace the mouse for web browsing or working in Excel, but I can see it being useful in lots of little situations all over the place.

      How many things we use now were gimmicks or never worth the expense? Who needs a "sound card"? What's wrong with just using the keyboard? Why would ANYONE ever need a pen/tablet?

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    8. Re:Prediction: All touch by Telvin_3d · · Score: 5, Informative

      Anyone who thinks that Firewire is less than a success hasn't tried to use a digital video camera in the past few years. Just because it hasn't replaced USB is no reason to consider it a failure.

    9. Re:Prediction: All touch by rjmnz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'll bite
      ADB, one of Woz's greatest successes, a bus on almost nothing that survived for >10yrs. USB is a functional superset of ADB.
      NuBus, actually texas instruments baby
      FireWire, marketing issues and now specialist but by no means a failure

    10. Re:Prediction: All touch by daveschroeder · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wrong. All Macs have FireWire. There are none that don't have FireWire, and there have been none that haven't had it since Macs started shipping with FireWire. Even FireWire 800 has been added *back* to some products that didn't have it at first (e.g., original MacBook Pro). But all still had at least FireWire 400, which has been the "standard" FireWire interface for years. There is no indication that any new Macs won't continue to have FireWire, considering so much depends on FireWire (see URL below).

      For more info, see:

      http://appleintelfaq.com/#17.3

      The only Apple product to drop FireWire is the iPod, and that's because an iPod doesn't need FireWire for anything, and would only add cost, power consumption, chipsets, etc., that aren't necessary for an increasingly smaller product. (But even iPods without FireWire can even still be charged via FireWire.) (And yes, just because someone who has to be contrarian will respond, the internal iSight also doesn't use FireWire, but that's totally irrelevant, since the transport for an internal camera housed in a computer is utterly meaningless to the user. And no, AppleTV doesn't have FireWire, but it's also not a "Mac", regardless of what OS it can run.)

  7. Meh by Judinous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Touch screens are nice and all, but personally I like the current interface. I enjoy being able to reach into my pocket while jogging and change songs without having to stop, pull the thing out, and look at the screen.

    1. Re:Meh by SpeedBump0619 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Touch screens are nice and all, but personally I like the current interface. I enjoy being able to reach into my pocket while jogging and change songs without having to stop, pull the thing out, and look at the screen.

      If both sides of the device were fully multi-touch enabled it seems like the device might be able to determine from your grip the orientation of the unit in your hand. That might allow for non-visual operation.

      The folks at Apple are pretty focused on usability. I'd at least give them the chance to prove their new technologies before I write them off.
  8. How about for their freaking laptops?!?! by aichpvee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So how long until we get a tablet mac? And maybe they could try living up to their billing as the "artist's" computer by actually giving us the features we need? Like maybe a decent resolution and tilt/pressure sensitivity equal to a stand-alone tablet!??!

    Yes I know it's a completely different tech and apple doesn't actually care about artists, but it'd be a whole lot more useful than a phone with no tactile feedback that will be even harder to use while driving a car, drinking your coffee, and smoking a cigarette at the same time.

    --
    The Farewell Tour II
    1. Re:How about for their freaking laptops?!?! by identity0 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Like maybe a decent resolution and tilt/pressure sensitivity equal to a stand-alone tablet!??!

      Yes I know it's a completely different tech and apple doesn't actually care about artists, but it'd be a whole lot more useful than a phone with no tactile feedback that will be even harder to use while driving a car, drinking your coffee, and smoking a cigarette at the same time.

      Oh my god, I just had the greatest idea ever - the iNipple.

      The idea comes from your post, and remembering putting my iPod in my breast pocket and manipulating it by twirling my finger in front of the pocket - a action that looks disturbingly like I'm feeling myself up.

      People are always saying, "The only intuitive interface is the nipple." well, now you can have an intuitive interface for the computer!!! Apple must have some inkling of this, otherwise why would all their iPods have a nipple (a center button surrounded by a round, flat area)?

      I envison a device that is like the analog stick on a gamecube, mounted on a soft, gel-filled mound that has touch and pressure sensors that could register button presses. They would come in pairs, and you would tweak the iNipple sensor at the top while squeezing and rubbing the mounds to type.

      Now, people will be able to drive their car, smoke, and drink coffee while copping a feel on their iPods!! The commute will never be the same!!!

    2. Re:How about for their freaking laptops?!?! by Staska · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You know, There's just such a gadget. iNipple: http://www.unwiredview.com/2007/04/04/crazy-ipod-a ccessory-an-ipod-bra/

    3. Re:How about for their freaking laptops?!?! by splict · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah? Well, I don't want my iPod yelling at me that I'm using it wrong!

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root
  9. Re:full screen nano? by HTTP+Error+403+403.9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hmm. I don't like the idea of a screen on the front while you manipulate a scroll wheel on the back, out of your sight. It's novel, but it breaks so many ergonomic principles I wouldn't know where to begin.
    Do you look at hand when you move your mouse?
    --
    I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
  10. Re:full screen nano? by Magneon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually, on a screen that small, wouldn't it be helpful not to block 1/2 the screen with your finger? It's hard enough with an older palm pilot that only has a 3" screen. Imagine what it would be like with a nano?

  11. And in Australia, they're planning to rebrand it.. by rockout · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... as the iTouchMyself

    --
    I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
  12. Re:eSpace patent and the iPod Tartus by retzkek · · Score: 2, Informative

    Tartus is a city in Syria.
    TARDIS is a spacecraft/time machine (of Time Lord design) that has an interior larger than its exterior.

    Unless you know something about Syria that really should be further explored, I think you mean the latter.

  13. Re:eSpace patent and the iPod Tartus by Prune · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, you cretinous imbecile. The problem with a touchscreen on the front is that the fingers cover part of the screen when you're touching it. When it's on the back, you can see the whole screen while using the touch interface. You didn't need to read the article to realize that, just basic thinking. Then again, obviously your type needs everything handed on a platter.

    --
    "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
  14. Firewire != Failure by cephal0p0d · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Failure my arse - tell it to my audio interface, my scanner, my external HD, my DV cam, my neighbors Sony notebook, my digital camera...

    --


    ~!J!