Get Your Multitouch On – Apple Wins Huge Patent Library
Patently Apple, the go-to source for all your news about what patents Apple has been granted or won, has published a big set of multitouch gestures Apple credits Wayne Westerman and John Elias as having invented. You may remember those two. Co-founders of Fingerworks. Ring any bells? And these gestures go way beyond just touch screen typing. We're talking way beyond swiping and pinching too.To look at the pictures Patently Apple has posted, these gestures seem rather complex, requiring memorizing what two fingers and an up and down gesture does as opposed to three fingers and an up and down gesture. While some of these such as "Next App" and "Prev App" seem more suited to the the large screen of the iPad, a few such as "Middle Button," "Right Button," and "Left Button" (among others) seem decidedly geared towards mouse usage. As the patent seems to cover a host of options, it's possible that these are designed to be split up over multiple devices, so iPad users may not have to learn forty-one new gesture commands. And clearly the Magic Mouse can't support all of these either. Of course, it's likely that even if Apple has won patents for all these gestures that many of them never make it on to devices. But it is still fun to look over the list of gestures, try them out, and imagine the possibilities.
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/get_your_multitouch_%E2%80%93_apple_wins_huge_patent_library
