“New documents unearthed on Wednesday show Apple was toying with a gesture-based unlock function for its mobile devices some four years after the idea was introduced in the Android operating system,” Mikey Campbell reports for AppleInsider. “Cupertino’s version, however, is arguably far more advanced than even the latest designs from Google.”
“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Wednesday published two Apple patent applications, both titled ‘Gesture entry techniques,’ that together form the basis of a device unlocking feature in which a user draws a pattern on screen with the help of illuminated discs,” Campbell reports. “One patent filing deals with the system as a whole, while the other focuses on entering and setting gestures on a mobile device.”
“According to the patent application, users have the ability to rearrange the lock screen’s graphical elements and can change their size to produce higher or lower tolerance gestures. For example, larger discs or dots are associated with higher tolerance gestures as it would be easier to move from one hit point to the next,” Campbell reports. “To make things more difficult for would-be attackers, the system can implement invisible dots or hit areas in the unlock path. Without prior knowledge of the dots’ locations, or that they exist at all, it would be prohibitively difficult to guess a correct unlock gesture… Apple’s gesture entry patent application was first filed for in 2012.”
Read more in the full article here.
Apple already uses this ‘illuminated disc’ gesture unlock in their POS app for retail staff.
How dare you call it a POS! I happen to know it is quite well built.
POS stands for “Point of Sale” you goof.
He was joking.
How do you know? Some ppl rly just don’t know.
We know because of the exact way he worded it
Invisible dots… That’s so obvious. I guess Samsung can put that in the next version of Touch Wiz.
I can see the memo now.
Apple UI includes invisible target areas
Samsung- add invisible target areas