Advanced Multitouch Gesturing Patents

Thursday November 22, 2007 7:51 pm PST by Arnold Kim
PCJoint.com points to ongoing research by Apple into multi-touch technologies. The most recent patent applications reveal techniques to recognize both palm and finger contacts in order to react appropriately.

PCJoint summarizes the possibilities:

- Need to move a cursor across the screen? Just slide your finger and it goes.
- Want to enter text? Just start typing and the text is there. You even get the touch feedback as if really pressing the keys.
- Need to erase some text? Use the backspace or just slide the finger backwards
- Have to write or draw something? Just pretend you hold a stylus or pen in your hand and start writing/drawing.
- If that is still not good enough, pick up the real stylus and start writing with it.
- All these cool touch gestures that Apple has implemented in iPhone and is exploring further? You know, scrolling, zooming, rotating & moving objects, etc; They are here too
- 3D object manipulation? Select a few 3D objects on the screen and use all 5 fingers on both hands to play with them.
- Want to take a break to relax and afraid to put your hands on the touch surface? Dont worry Multi-touch 2.0 thingie knows that and does not pay attention to your resting palms or fingers


This should come as no surprise to those who have been following Apple's patent applications as well as their previous acquisition of Fingerworks. Previous patent applications have also suggested the possibility of one surface acting for many different functions (such as typing and gestures).

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