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Advanced Multitouch Gesturing Patents

GregA said:
Huh?
Microsoft demoed Surface months after Apple demoed iPhone.
Microsoft released Surface... when? (have they?)... certainly after Apple released iPhone.
Click to expand...

I didn't say Microsoft released Surface before Apple "demoed" iphone. I said Microsoft debuted / demoed (semantics) before Apple "released" iphone. I was merely giving a time frame not suggesting that anyone stole or copied anything from anybody.

Neither Surface nor iPhone are 3D interfaces though, which is what you're replying to.... Anyway.. I'm not sure what your point is.
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I guess that depends on what your definition of a 3D multi-touch interface is. I consider being able to build 3D models and manipulate them with multiple hand gestures a 3D interface. Also surface will recognize common three dimensional devices and objects placed on the table and allow interaction and interfacing with multi-touch software.

The point of my post was that AppleFan69 called another poster a "retard", a comment that I find offensive, when he had made a perfectly legitimate comment.
 
SiliconAddict said:
Damn it. You can't patent some of this crap! I mean really. Moving your finger backwards to erase. Good lord this has been don on PDA's for about a decade. Apple is going patent insane.



The iPhone is to Surface as a barcode reader in a PDA is to the technology in general. Apple's implementation is "cute". Its not trying to invent an industry. To put it more bluntly. Microsoft is taking risks with their tech with a long term plan. Apple is doing NOTHING with the touch implementation in the iPhone other then being gimmicky.
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As long as the USPTO allows stupid patents, Apple and many others will continue to do so, difference is Apple doesn't sit on them and sue everyone that has anything remotely similar, its a defensive move on their part.

As to the iPhone implementation being cute, that's because Apple realises this is a paradigm shift with risks and rather than risk another Newton they are staggering the number of gestures, with an initial group of simple, obvious and useful ones. What's microsoft doing? They're releasing a prototype of a device that will never make any money, with as many functions as they can think of in order to deliver a FUD land grab. I will not be surprised when both Apple and Microsoft via partners have laptops next year sporting multi-touch. I'm just betting on Apple's implementation.

M.
 
digitalbiker said:
I didn't say Microsoft released Surface before Apple "demoed" iphone. I said Microsoft debuted / demoed (semantics) before Apple "released" iphone.



I guess that depends on what your definition of a 3D multi-touch interface is. I consider being able to build 3D models and manipulate them with multiple hand gestures a 3D interface. Also surface will recognize common three dimensional devices and objects placed on the table and allow interaction and interfacing with multi-touch software.

The point of my post was that AppleFan69 called another poster a "retard", a comment that I find offensive, when he had made a perfectly legitimate comment.
Click to expand...

In no video of surface have i seen anyone build a 3D model. Also what your describing goes beyond what either Apple or MS have built and the reason is because it's a non-obvious gesture that people can't just walk up and understand. Jeff Han's built that into his multitouch boards, but he's looking at technical/military applications.

Also recognising a 2D tag on a 3D object is not a 3D user interface. Subjective perception i'm sure but MS's implementation uses a 2D interface to present options when a 3D object is present, not that the 3d object 'controls' the UI in any significant way.

Though i agree with you that anyone reduced to calling someone a retard on a forum is not needed.

M. :)
 
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digitalbiker said:
GregA said:
Huh?
Microsoft demoed Surface months after Apple demoed iPhone.
Microsoft released Surface... when? (have they?)... certainly after Apple released iPhone.
Click to expand...

I didn't say Microsoft released Surface before Apple "demoed" iphone. I said Microsoft debuted / demoed (semantics) before Apple "released" iphone. I was merely giving a time frame not suggesting that anyone stole or copied anything from anybody.

Neither Surface nor iPhone are 3D interfaces though, which is what you're replying to.... Anyway.. I'm not sure what your point is.
Click to expand...

I guess that depends on what your definition of a 3D multi-touch interface is. I consider being able to build 3D models and manipulate them with multiple hand gestures a 3D interface. Also surface will recognize common three dimensional devices and objects placed on the table and allow interaction and interfacing with multi-touch software.

The point of my post was that AppleFan69 called another poster a "retard", a comment that I find offensive, when he had made a perfectly legitimate comment.
Click to expand...

your right I did step out of line with that comment. I apologize hopefully ill be forgiven.

I still dont think microsoft surface is 3'd touch interface. Honestly I think true 3'd touch interface is impossible because it would require holograms that could detect touch. Since holograms ( to my knowledge) are just projected light. I dont think 3'd touch interface is possible nor practical.

Afterall what's wrong with just x, y axis's? It seems to work quite well so far :)
 
SiliconAddict said:
Damn it. You can't patent some of this crap! I mean really. Moving your finger backwards to erase. Good lord this has been don on PDA's for about a decade. Apple is going patent insane.



The iPhone is to Surface as a barcode reader in a PDA is to the technology in general. Apple's implementation is "cute". Its not trying to invent an industry. To put it more bluntly. Microsoft is taking risks with their tech with a long term plan. Apple is doing NOTHING with the touch implementation in the iPhone other then being gimmicky.

Oh and as for Surface and when it was being developed. Sorry but I've been hearing rumors about this since 2003 when we had reps from MS doing then mobile experience tour for the Pocket PC. I use to lead the Pocket PC user group here in MN and I can tell you that there was rumblings about a gesture based interface back then. At the time it was thought that it was going to ship with the Tablet PC edition of Vista to allow you to interface with the tablet without a pen. This obviously didn't happen. MS HAS been working on this a while. The only reason why they choose now to demo it was because of Apple and Mac fanbois who would immediately bitch that they are ripping Apple off even though the two have NOTHING in common other then using your finger and hand. It was launched early and wasn't ready for prime time simply because of Apple. But frankly Apple's implementation is NOTHING. You do realize that coverflow was purchased by Apple. It didn't originate from them. Right? Really. People do need to end this copy crap. Apple copies MS. MS copies Apple. Apple gets a metric crap ton of technologies from open source. And it goes on and on and on.
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thing is, apple keeps quiet when it comes to research, whereas msft is a blabbermouth. so even if you hear of microsoft doing somethng first, theres a good chance its not really true in reality.
i remember apple were doing research into alternative interaction as far back as 1995.
 
MikeDTyke said:
In no video of surface have i seen anyone build a 3D model. Also what your describing goes beyond what either Apple or MS have built and the reason is because it's a non-obvious gesture that people can't just walk up and understand. Jeff Han's built that into his multitouch boards, but he's looking at technical/military applications.

Also recognising a 2D tag on a 3D object is not a 3D user interface. Subjective perception i'm sure but MS's implementation uses a 2D interface to present options when a 3D object is present, not that the 3d object 'controls' the UI in any significant way.

Though i agree with you that anyone reduced to calling someone a retard on a forum is not needed.

M. :)
Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying and I agree that "3D multi-touch interface" could technically be working with some sort of multi-dimensional interface.

BUT I can also tell you that I have seen, in a major oil company research department, an MS Surface device manipulate 3D dimensional earth models. It was working much the way a clay sculptor works. You could rotate the 3D object, bend and mold the surface by varying pressure on the pressure sensitive table. It is a 3D interface because it works with X, Y, and pressure to shape displayed objects.
 
SiliconAddict said:
Damn it. You can't patent some of this crap! I mean really. Moving your finger backwards to erase. Good lord this has been don on PDA's for about a decade. Apple is going patent insane.
Click to expand...

No they haven't and since you haven't yet seen the full implementation of the finger-moving-backward erase gesture, you have no idea whether it's the same as what you've done previously on other devices.

Apple is just protecting themselves against the unethical behavior of other, less worthy competitors. A lot of people were convinced that the column-like view of the iPod's navigation was so obvious that Creative's patent on it wouldn't stand up in court, and yet Apple ended up getting spanked good on that one. I don't blame Apple at this point. Their history is full of great ideas being ripped off by other companies. I have a hard time begrudging them some protection of their research and creativity.

Edit: Here's another instance of someone abusing the patent system to make money off Apple's ideas. Don't call Apple "patent insane" when they're constantly getting screwed over by companies that truly are patent insane.
 
GregA said:
Note that the best way of making touch useless is making it work like a mouse. You can still only click one thing, and it's harder to do that!

What Apple (& MS) do with Multitouch will be intriguing.
Click to expand...

Amen to that. If you only need the pointer functionality, touchpads are fine. I love how I can easily "right-click" and scroll on both axis on my Macbook's touchpad. Even with a mouse connected, I prefer using the touchpad for scrolling.

I think the iPhone interface does make a pretty good use of 2 fingers. It's not really using your finger as a pointer, rather you can tap things, move them around (swipe, scroll), manipulate items (pinch to zoom) and perform some custom actions like deleting (swipe to the right) here and there. As this is a handheld device, you can't really have more than 2 fingers or thumbs available. Except, of course, if you have an additional touch input sensor on the back which is just cool.
 
I'm quite interested behind the logic behind 'Pretend to hold a pen or stylus in your hand and write something' with this multi-touch.

What do they mean? As in, just hold your hand in the shape of a way you'd hold a pen, and the screen will pick it up from your hand/palm shape? That surely is way too imprecise for writing? Anybody whos tried drawing on the iPhone/Touch knows what it feels like.

But what about actually holding a stylus or pen? Anybody who knows anything about multi-touch knows it is a capacitance surface. Which means it detects the electric signals in your fingers to rely on input, which makes it much more smoother than a pressure based system. Nintendo DS and PDAs are all pressure based, which allows them to use styluses, but also means when you use your finger, you have to press just that bit harder, and not this 'glide your fingers' beauty from multi-touch. Could they possibly make a battery operated stylus?

But we all know what Steve Jobs thinks of styluses. 'ew'

If Apple finds a good way around this then bravo, because it is genuinely a concern. Both technologies are great, and multi-touch is simply an amazing technology. But its still in its infancy, and it still has niggling problems. Like this.

Rant over :)

Otherwise this sounds really cool, albiet what we've heard for months.
 
MattJessop said:
I'm quite interested behind the logic behind 'Pretend to hold a pen or stylus in your hand and write something' with this multi-touch.

What do they mean? As in, just hold your hand in the shape of a way you'd hold a pen, and the screen will pick it up from your hand/palm shape? That surely is way too imprecise for writing? Anybody whos tried drawing on the iPhone/Touch knows what it feels like.

But what about actually holding a stylus or pen? Anybody who knows anything about multi-touch knows it is a capacitance surface. Which means it detects the electric signals in your fingers to rely on input, which makes it much more smoother than a pressure based system. Nintendo DS and PDAs are all pressure based, which allows them to use styluses, but also means when you use your finger, you have to press just that bit harder, and not this 'glide your fingers' beauty from multi-touch. Could they possibly make a battery operated stylus?

But we all know what Steve Jobs thinks of styluses. 'ew'

If Apple finds a good way around this then bravo, because it is genuinely a concern. Both technologies are great, and multi-touch is simply an amazing technology. But its still in its infancy, and it still has niggling problems. Like this.

Rant over :)

Otherwise this sounds really cool, albiet what we've heard for months.
Click to expand...

As it seems you need either a capacitance based or camera based display to do multi-touch it does follow a stylus will probably emit a small electrical field to simulate a finger. Though i don't think it'll be the case of needing to replace batteries once a month, the field would be tiny.

Oh and he also said video on a hand held device would never work. :rolleyes:

I'm still holding out hope for the iNote tablet with stylus for markup and note taking, hi res display for ebooks and a battery life that lasts all day. Shame this precludes an intel processor for now. ie. it'll be OS X on arm as opposed to macos. :(

M. :p
 
SiliconAddict said:
Apple copies MS. MS copies Apple. Apple gets a metric crap ton of technologies from open source. And it goes on and on and on.
Click to expand...

Right. Where would the Mac OS be without Xerox? The trick is being clever enough to know which ideas to steal.

If Steve Jobs had demoed Surface at a Keynote, Mac devotees (me included) would have gone wild. It looks impressive and most people will have seen nothing like it before. However, it is being developed by Microsoft and whether they can implement a real life functioning product using the technology is pretty debatable. Now if Apple did to that kind of touch screen technology what it did to the Xerox graphical user interface...
 
one major problem no-one seems to have thought of with this type of device is one of ergonomics and body posture. Whilst it is fine on a small iphone like device to look at the screen as you touch it, for any kind of "real" computer that you might actually want to do work on there are some problems.

Firstly in a relaxed position your eyes look ahead, we all know the best position for a monitor is infront of your face not on your desk, otherwise we would all lay our flat screens down on our desks. Our arms on the other hand like to hang by our sides , not be held up suspended in mid air ffor hours on end. If you have a large single device for input and visualisation then you are going to be compromised on at least one front. Either you have the device on your lap or desk and will have to contantly be bending your neck to look down or you will have it in front of you in which case your arms are up all the time.

One solution would be to have it slanted at roughly 45 degrees towards you, which would solve these problems but would require you to redesign your furniture or put it on a stand which isn't exactly elegant.

I can see this multi touch device being purely an input device which would plug into your current setup via usb. This would be great as it would be cheaper and could be added on to an existing setup with only the need for drivers to be installed. There would probably be a visual feedback on the screen similar to a mouse pointer.

I am sure at some point there will be a combined device but it will like a large iphone , not anything that you would actually want to do any work on for any length of time. Probably just some kind of media centre control device.....
 
treysmay said:
I hate to say this But I think the other half of the market, ie. Microsoft and friends have a more promising function for the distant future. While apple has a short terms plan. :apple: is only covering X and Y, while the big M is putting big money in the 'Z':eek:
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What the heck does this even mean? :confused:
 
bmk said:
Right. Where would the Mac OS be without Xerox? The trick is being clever enough to know which ideas to steal.

If Steve Jobs had demoed Surface at a Keynote, Mac devotees (me included) would have gone wild. It looks impressive and most people will have seen nothing like it before. However, it is being developed by Microsoft and whether they can implement a real life functioning product using the technology is pretty debatable. Now if Apple did to that kind of touch screen technology what it did to the Xerox graphical user interface...
Click to expand...

No it wouldn't.

Surface HAS NO CURRENT USE. They are talking about something years in the future. It's a solution looking for a problem. When Steve Jobs show stuff at MacWorld, it's something that will come out THAT YEAR FOR SALE. Not in "2 years, maybe, if we can find venues to sell it through, maybe."

If that was the case, they should have demoed the iPhone in 2005.

Surface is currently nothing. Get over it. It looked interesting, but so does a lot of fake stuff that I see in movies. When it is something REAL that can be USED and BOUGHT, call me...ok?

:apple:
 
Multitouch Impact - Coding Considerations

I was looking at some open source Java code the other day and saw something interesting - the MouseAdapter routines were marked as synchronized. What this means is that only one process can be inside the routine at a time. If 2 different processes were using the same routine at the same time that could corrupt your data - marking the code as synchronized prevents that.

Normally this is something you don't have to worry about and people don't write code this way - by the time the user has moved the mouse again your routine has finished its work, you are on a single thread of execution and there is (usually) only one mouse. However with multi-touch you do have to worry about simultaneous events - one for each finger if you will.

My point is that multi-touch could break a lot of existing code.

Does anyone know if the base classes in Cocoa handle this problem as is?


========================================================
Ordering a new iMac TODAY. 2.4 GHz, 24", 4GB (OWC memory), 500GB :D
 
Dude...

digitalbiker said:
You need to get around a little more. Microsoft debuted Microsoft Surface before Apple officially released the iphone.
http://www.microsoft.com/surface
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You can't be serious. A "debut" usually means presenting a more or less finished product ready for release...that media event was more like presenting an R&D prototype, not fully functional, of a device which may never "Surface"). That is NOT BY YEARS OF WORK the same as releasing a finished product with much more capability and technical complexity, such as the iPhone.

And Apple "debuted" the iPhone in January, well before MS "debuted" the Surface, just in case any of you really care.
 
nimbuscloud said:
Surface HAS NO CURRENT USE. They are talking about something years in the future. It's a solution looking for a problem. When Steve Jobs show stuff at MacWorld, it's something that will come out THAT YEAR FOR SALE. Not in "2 years, maybe, if we can find venues to sell it through, maybe."

If that was the case, they should have demoed the iPhone in 2005.

Surface is currently nothing. Get over it. It looked interesting, but so does a lot of fake stuff that I see in movies. When it is something REAL that can be USED and BOUGHT, call me...ok?

:apple:
Click to expand...

Calm down a bit. I'm not stupid and I'm not being sucked in by the MS Surface hype. Of course at the moment there are no current uses for it (or at least very few that I can see), and as I said, I don't have much faith in Ms's ability to deliver a working solution. But that's not to say that there won't ever be one, or that it won't lead to something that does change our current computing paradigm.
 
SiliconAddict said:
Oh and as for Surface and when it was being developed. Sorry but I've been hearing rumors about this since 2003 when we had reps from MS doing then mobile experience tour for the Pocket PC. I use to lead the Pocket PC user group here in MN and I can tell you that there was rumblings about a gesture based interface back then.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Same state but apparently different planets. Since when do "rumors" and "rumblings" constitute fact and/or prior art? There were rumors of an Apple phone since about 2000. The concept of gesture-based interfaces (as a broad concept) goes back before MS or Apple were created, in several science fiction works. So have the concepts of turning lead or straw into gold.

As is the case with all concepts (AND PATENTS), having an idea is one thing...but it doesn't count until it's reduced to practice.
 
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