A recent patent application by Apple details the company’s interest in expanding the number of gestures its multi-touch displays can recognize. Right now, there’s but so many gestures you can tap out on your iPhone or MacBook Pro: zoom in and out, rotate, pan around, etc. This patent, which is called ”gesture learning,” shows that Apple has developed an entire language of sorts based on gesture inputs. Yes, sorta like a sign language, specifically for inputting commands on one of Apple multi-touch displays.
Apple has designed it such that each hand can create 25 “chords,” or combinations of finger placement, alongside 13 different movements. In total, one hand on its own can do 325 different commands. Crazy.
And there’s a game that Apple has devised to teach people the gesture language.
Of all the patents I’ve seen, this one is by far the most interesting.
via Unwired View
Cool, looks like they’re finally planning on adding in the multi-touch functionality from their Fingerworks investment.
I’ve had a Fingerworks keyboard since 2002 and after using all the multi-touch features for so long, any other interface seems like going back to the stone age. Kudos to Apple, I hope they can elevate general computing to a next generation of man-machine interfaces.
I guess that it’s Wayne’s work. His company was bought by Apple several years ago, and his PhD thesis is about gesture definition.
Check here:
http://uiui.mmdays.com/2008/04/07/multitouch-gesture/