“On April 16, 2015, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals a possible future Apple TV remote that includes a touchpad/gesture pad that could operate in both gesture and character modes,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“The Apple TV remote really needs to be updated and if Apple is bringing new TV channel bundles to Apple TV this fall, then this new remote concept is one of the options that Apple may use if they don’t use Siri or other methodologies to control Apple TV this fall,” Purcher reports. “According to Apple, a touch sensor of an electronic device that may be used to navigate one or more presented lists may be operable in at least a gesture mode and a character mode.”
Purcher reports, “In the gesture mode, one or more touches detected by the touch sensor may be interpreted as gesture input (such as one or more taps, swipes, slides, touches, pinches, and/or any other combination of one or more touches interpretable as a gesture) for navigating the list.”
More info, including Apple’s patent application illustrations, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hmm. Current Sony 4K TVs are currently shipping with a more rudimentary touchpad remote. You can see it in action in this video:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill” for the heads up.]