Now that multi-touch is all the rage with Apple products and for good reason mind you, what can we expect next from Cupertino? Come October we should see slimmer MacBooks with a multi-touch touchpad. How about a mouse? That’d be the coolest thing wouldn’t it?
The latest patent filing from Apple shows us such a mouse that would relegate all ‘button’ functions into the magical multi-touch function putting your phalanges in the driver’s seat. It’s all very interesting and I’m excited to see when this will actually hit the market or if it ever does. I had a chance to fondle an iPhone over the weekend and I was impressed by the multi-touch functionality. Everything else about it was pretty abysmal, but I was still tempted to buy one just because I HAVE to have the latest and greatest. Ugh. Nothing will ever be the same.
A configurable mouse with an extended sensing surface, which provides the mouse a customizable, programmable or adaptable way of generating inputs, the mouse including an arbitrarily shaped grippable member having a 3D shape, a position detection mechanism that detects the movement of the mouse along a surface, a multipoint touch detection mechanism that detects one or more objects that are contacting or in close proximity to a substantially large portion of the grippable member, and a controller for processing signals generated by the position detection mechanism and multipoint touch detection mechanism.
Next step in Apple touch interface – multi-touch mouse [PC Joint]
1) apple’s next laptops should make more aggressive use of the santa rosa functionality (beyond the benefit in form-factor (thiness) that comes from being flash-base) …
apple should leverage the santa rosa feature that allows for an external LCD on the outside of the shell which functions (with or) without the internal OS! – obviously i am thinking an ipod-like functionality … but also os/x dashboard for single-function information web 2.0 widgets would be useful.
2) also: unless apple finally produces a tablet (aka “iPad”), the i want another LCD _inside_ the laptop shell itself — functioning not as an ipod per se (like the extrenal idea) but rather as a super-large trackpad!
Wouldn’t it be nice if they would make a mouse that doesnt make that klik sound?!
Like if your working in a group on one table i always get frustrated of that klik klik klik….