Apple Awarded iPhone and Multi-Touch Patent
Perhaps adding teeth to Apple's
recent comments that they would vigorously defend their intellectual property behind the iPhone,
World of Apple notes that the U.S. Patent Office has awarded Apple the
patent on their application titled
Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics.
The mammoth 358 page patent application incorporates patent applications filed as far back as September 2006 and has been previously dubbed "The iPhone Patent" by some. The application details the implementation of Multi-Touch on the iPhone alongside numerous diagrams of the device itself:
A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command.
Steve Jobs is prominently listed amongst the inventors along with other notable individuals such as Scott Forstall and Wayne Westerman.
Popular Stories
Black Friday sales are continuing today with Best Buy kicking off early Black Friday deals that will last for the next few days. Similar to other retailers, Best Buy's early Black Friday event includes sitewide savings on Apple products, headphones, TVs, monitors, video games, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may...
Apple has returned to using two 128GB storage chips in the new Mac mini with 256GB of storage, according to a partial teardown video shared on social media today. This means the base-model Mac mini with the M4 chip will not have significantly slower SSD speeds compared to higher-end configurations of the computer with 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage, as multiple NAND chips allows for faster SSD...
Law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan are warning other police officers about an alleged iPhone change that causes Apple devices stored for forensic examination to spontaneously restart, reports 404 Media.
iPhones that are undergoing examination have apparently been rebooting, which makes them harder to unlock with brute force methods, and Michigan police think that it's due to a...
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 updates to developers, and Apple is continuing to refine the Apple Intelligence capabilities. There are also a handful of smaller features that are worth knowing about.
Find My
Find My has a new option to Share Item Location with an "airline or trusted person" that can help you locate something that you've misplaced....
Apple launched the new Mac mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro models with M4 chips today, and because the Mac mini is the only one of the machines that got a design update, we thought we'd check it out to see how it compares to the prior version.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
The 2024 version of the Mac mini is much smaller than the previous M2 model, so it takes up...
High Power Mode is available on the 14-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini models with the M4 Pro chip, according to Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham. The feature was previously limited to Macs with Apple's highest-end "Max" chip, so this is the first time it is available on Macs with a "Pro" chip.
This is the second time that Apple has expanded availability of High Power...
It has been nearly two and a half years since Apple first previewed next-generation CarPlay at WWDC 2022, and it has still yet to become available in any vehicles.
Below, we recap the latest information about next-generation CarPlay.
Launch Timing
Apple's website continues to say that the first vehicles with next-generation CarPlay support will "arrive in 2024," but it has yet to provide ...
The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips launched in stores today. If you are not planning to upgrade this year, be aware that there are already rumors about next year's MacBook Pro models with M5 series chips.
It appears the MacBook Pro will remain on an annual upgrade cycle next year. Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today said camera module...