“Apple has been working on force sensors for touch displays, a future version of the Magic Mouse right through to the Apple Watch for some time now,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“Since this feature will debut with Apple Watch in April, force sensors could be on track to move to other devices over time including the Magic Mouse, the iPad and iPhone,” Purcher reports. “In fact a rumor recently surfaced about this feature being aimed for next-gen iPhones.”
“Today, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple which actually combines more than 24 patents into a single patent application,” Purcher reports. “One of the key aspects of the invention relates to devices that could detect a first portion of a gesture on a touch-sensitive surface, including detecting intensity of a respective contact of the gesture.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple’s next-gen iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus to feature Force Touch – February 28, 2015
iPhone 6s to feature new dual-lens camera and Apple Watch’s ‘Force Touch’ pressure sensor, sources say – January 13, 2015
Move over Wacom!
Completely different technologies and completely different execution.
Obviously Wacom has nothing to do with touch technology. And yet, their pressure sensitive technology is what we use right now and will indeed have to ‘move over’ as touch sensitivity is expanded to our fingers. We also already know that Apple has patented styluses of their own which obviously are going to be used with this technology. IOW: These two technologies are very akin to each other. – But I wouldn’t ever call my perceptions perfect. I just tossed out what I consider to be an obvious and fun comment.
I still don’t get why this is important… What are some real-world situations where this would be useful?
Maybe for use in electronic instrument apps on the iPad.. But in that case they better make sure they’re not stepping on Yamaha’s patents to that effect