February 28, 2008
Some thoughts on multi-touch, patents and the future
Posted Feb. 28, ’08, 2:00 PM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Hardware
In a post on his blog at CNET, Tom Krazit discusses how Apple’s implementing Multi-Touch gesture recognition on its notebooks might impact us in the future, as the technology is more widely adopted and different PC vendors implement the same feature on their own notebooks.
The thing that vexes Tom is the possibility that PC makers, in an attempt to sidestep Apple’s patents (and avoid the legendary Jobsian wrath), start using various different gestures for doing similar tasks. Are we headed towards a future where pinching and expanding your fingertips on a MacBook zooms into an image but a similar gesture on a Sony VAIO deletes a file?
Personally, I don’t think we are. Such things tend to sort themselves out in the long run. Doesn’t tapping on all trackpads indicate a mouse click and don’t we have scroll wheels that function pretty much the same on all mice? Maybe the multi-touch trackpad will make its way onto ThinkPads and Inspirons in the same way and pinching and zooming will expand pictures on every multi-touch enabled device.
Even if we do end up with different multi-touch interfaces on different notebooks in the future, I don’t think it will be much of a catastrophe. As Krazit himself points out, we’re used to Macs and PCs having different modifier keys and cars having different gearshifts (not to mention the continental US having four different time zones), so I guess we’ll adapt ourself to some more diversity in our computing devices when the time comes.
Either way, it certainly is food for thought and once again raises the question of whether patents really do help us in any way or just act as speedbumps in the path of progress. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, so feel free to sound off in the comments.
1 Comments
Leave a comment
Recent Entries
About MacUser
MacUser is your source for news, info, and opinion about Apple, the Mac, and the iPod. Our dedicated team of bloggers covers everything that is relevant to Mac users — and, okay, some stuff that’s not quite relevant, but is still a lot of fun. (Plus, we've got columns by Andy Ihnatko!)
Subscribe/RSS
- Blog Posts
- Blog Comments
- Podcast (RSS) (iTunes)
Tip us off!
- Email: macuser [at] macuser [dot] com
Recent Comments 
- Aayush Arya on Wait...Spotlight can do that?!
- Be on Wait...Spotlight can do that?!
- D Jones on Wait...Spotlight can do that?!
- David M on Wait...Spotlight can do that?!
- Bob on U-Charge: like U-Haul, but for batteries. Except not.
- on Apple product placement debuts on video games
Categories
- Apple (173)
- Advertising (135)
- Events (198)
- Huh? (139)
- Humor (229)
- News (128)
- People (223)
- Rivals (334)
- Speculation (134)
- Steve Jobs (142)
- Stores (170)
- Apple TV (50)
- Business (374)
- Games (128)
- Geekery (409)
- Hardware (836)
- Accessories (53)
- Intel Macs (157)
- Ihnatko (18)
- Internet (379)
- Legal (194)
- MacUser (87)
- Money (153)
- Music (312)
- Podcasting (97)
- Photography (66)
- Security (205)
- Software (1368)
- Updates (457)
- Tips (324)
- Troubleshooting (172)
- Video (356)
- Windows (190)
- iPhone (174)
- iPod (560)
- iPod Accessories (87)
- iPod Software (56)
- iTunes (97)
- iTunes Store (376)
Archives
- May 2008 (109)
- April 2008 (234)
- March 2008 (217)
- February 2008 (215)
- January 2008 (239)
- December 2007 (169)
- November 2007 (164)
- October 2007 (187)
- September 2007 (167)
- August 2007 (195)
- July 2007 (152)
- June 2007 (223)
- May 2007 (243)
- April 2007 (286)
- March 2007 (288)
- February 2007 (250)
- January 2007 (266)
- December 2006 (244)
- November 2006 (293)
- October 2006 (307)
- September 2006 (250)
- August 2006 (268)
- July 2006 (288)
- June 2006 (293)
- May 2006 (297)
- April 2006 (351)
- March 2006 (366)
- February 2006 (110)
- January 2006 (107)
- December 2005 (23)
Mac Publishing Sites
Links
IDG NETWORK:
The scenario you discribe is nigh impossible. The gesture has (I assume, I haven't read the patents) been patented, not the action. So Apple has the patent on the iPhone/MacBook pinch. Pinching on another device with either do nothing or the same thing because they licensed Apple's patent.
So, yeah, we might end up with multiple gesture libraries. Mac/iPhone/iPod users get simple intuitive gestures, everyone else has to do some form of the Vulcan nerve pinch. That would make Steve Jobs deliriously happy.