A new patent application from Apple, “called ‘Gesture learning’ gives a whole new meaning to gesture expansion. It describes how Apple may go about teaching you a whole new multi-touch gesture language, consisting of hundreds of words. Something like American Sign Language for touchscreens,” Staska reports for Unwired View.
“To describe the possibilities of multi-touch gesture language, Apple splits a single gesture into two phases. The first phase of the gesture includes specific combination of fingers (or other hand parts) that you place on the touchscreen. It’s called chord. Another phase is the movement of the fingers – rotation, translation, scaling, etc. Taken together these phases make a full multi-touch gesture,” Staska reports.
“Well, you can do the math yourself. 25 or more chords with 13 or more possible movements. That’s at least 325 possible gesture combinations for a single hand,” Staska reports.
“Apple proposes a separate interactive multi-touch gesture learning application” Staska reports. “Nothing too complex, just a screen area for the user for assisted experimentation with different gestures, another small animated window showing how to perform the gesture and interactive feedback mechanism, showing how well user is performing the gesture. And to make it more fun, Apple can make a game out of the whole learning process.”
Much more, including patent app illustrations in the full article here.
If it’s a new patent application, it’s 1-2 years away from market, surely?
“it’s 1-2 years away from market, surely?”
And don’t call me Shirley.
Leave it to Apple to innovate a new language.
Shirley? I thought it was Steve?
Apple should buy Jeff Han’s company Perceptive Pixel to acquire him and all the company patents. Let’s get a monoply on multi-touch.
Shirley? I thought it was Bob? Not Bill, surely.
Why would I want to stretch my arm(s) out to the screen for hours on end, then cover it with smears of peanut butter and jelly?
I could see this helping Photoshop and Illustrator greatly. Wow! The thought just excites me.
Hey Thomas, didn’t your Mom teach you to wash your mitts after making your hands dirty?
And what makes you think your screen will have a vertical orientation? Apple employs ergonomics experts, didn’t you know? I’d bet they’ll have something to say about how the new technology interfaces with the hardware!
“Why would I want to stretch my arm(s) out to the screen for hours on end” – Doubting Thomas
This would be on the keyboard area.
@R2 : now that you wrote it, M$ will!! ;/
P.S. Oh… i forgot! No M$ won’t, after all, M$ is sinking into a crisis these days… There was already not enough monney to buy up Yahoo!…
@ Thomas
Who told you screens would still be standing vertically at arm-stretchd distance?!?
It’s a brilliant plan. It can evolve over time; like a real language. It has already started. We have one finger and two fingers. We have double taps. I discovered in Photoshop recently that when using the brush tool you can double tap and start drawing as if you were holding the “left click button” down (this is on a note book pad). This is just the beginning.
will a finger-snapping gesture make it snappier?
@almux
Yes, one of the reasons I want Apple to buy them is that I fear another company will beat them to it. May not necessarily be Microsoft, there’s a whole bunch of companies like Sony, Samsung and LG who are likely trying to get a grasp of this multi-touch stuff.
So if Microsoft implements this could they make the three finger ‘ctl-alt-delete’ a single gesture?
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They forgot the middle finger gesture. I’m going to patent that.
Minority Report, here we come! Now excuse me while I go multi-touch myself.
Let me propose the sign for Microsoft be the extension of the middle finger of the right hand, while the other fingers are tucked into the palm.
So we’re going to have to memorize this “Sign language”?
will be as easily usable by lefties as righties?
@R2
I don’t want an Apple monopoly on gestures. Competition produces the best innovation, even in Apple.
The mouse and menu introduced us to reverse-Polish notation (choose object, choose what you want to do with it), like Noun then Verb, so now it seems the gestures will also follow this pattern. The chord describes the ‘What’ and the gesture describes the ‘How’.
I hope their choice of chords and gestures are intuitive across multiple applications, since this was the killer interface for WIMP vs Lotus123/WordStar/WordPerfect/dBase/Harvard Graphics’ totally different interfaces back in the late 1980s.
I still reckon Apple doesn’t need to fight MS over the dominance of PCs, they only need to redefine what a PC is (or should be) again.
I just got my head around the two fingered right-click.
I think 4 to 6 special gestures, like the 2 finger drag for scrolling, will work just fine. Any more than that would just be rediculous.
3 fingers on the pad or screen of the left hand while a finger on the right hand taps 3 times to open Excel. Yea, right.
Look, this is just a patent guarding aganst a compeditor using a 3 finger drag for scrolling just to get around Apple’s patent for a 2 finger drag for scrolling.
Make your patent cover as many possible cenarious as you can! Keep those bastards from copying your intelectual property any way you can.
At least Apple is shipping product that uses their patents.
what’s up with the hands in the illustration? they look like claws. couldn’t they draw more realistic pictures?
Hey, if Apple is the first outa the gate, well all my blessings. They have given us a lot of innovations and they deserve their advantage. They’re first, they get to run with the ball. You got a better widget? Well money up then biotches!