A vertical touch pad would be more efficient. The iPod circle was tiring to scroll and you don't get momentum. It's also one direction, a surface is two directions. I figured they'd do something like the following. The thumb scanner wouldn't look like that, it would just just be a sensor area. That would be to authenticate things without typing a password and to verify age:
The main body of the controller would be a touch surface, possibly covered in glass. This would make it easier to input text too. There was a video game a while ago that used a single thumbstick to enter text and it did it like this in a spiral:
Text can be entered using a vertical swipe and horizontal swipes can switch categories like numbers, letters, punctuation. You'd just swipe vertically down a list in a similar way that you swipe down the letter column on contacts on an iPhone. With Force Touch, they can distinguish between hovering and pressing but they can also just do swipe to highlight and release to enter. Autocomplete would popup suggestions and the touch area can be used to jump up to the autocomplete part. They can also let you scrub over a virtual keyboard with the surface.
That controller would need to be any bigger than the current one though. If it was a full gaming controller, like this then it would be bigger:
but I don't think a normal touch remote would have to be bigger unless the touch surface impacted the battery more.
You're right, I had forgotten about scrolling momentum (something that the iPod did not have). But without momentum, I'd say that the scroll wheel is less tiresome than a mini vertical trackpad for scrolling long lists.
These are interesting concepts that you have, but I'm wondering how it could work in practice, would there be a cursor on the screen? How would it differentiate between scrolling and pointing?
These are interesting concepts that you have, but I'm wondering how it could work in practice, would there be a cursor on the screen? How would it differentiate between scrolling and pointing?
There wouldn't be a cursor, it would just use selected states. If you enable a text input box, it would show a character entry method and on dismissing this via an option on the virtual keyboard, a Force Touch or one of the buttons, it would switch to selecting content boxes. The two buttons can always be used to represent moving down a UI level and back up.
They have an icon view just now where making a movement on the controller changes the selection state from one icon to the next. That covers choosing between apps. To do a search, you'd just move over to the search box and press to enable it and up would come the text input method. You then do the gestures to input text (or Siri) and the play button can enter the search and the menu button can release the search or use an option on the virtual keyboard to dismiss it.
The current UI has well-defined levels so once an icon/app is selected, it's just a horizontal menu up top and every time you enter another level, you are just panning around lists of items with selectors around them and the menu button is used to just back up to the next UI level:
[VIDEO]
[VIDEO]
Touch would allow pinch zoom too, which can scale UI objects up or down e.g small/medium/large. It could allow it to run a web browser. By default touch would scroll the page but a force touch can switch to selecting objects on the page like links and input boxes.
Comments
A vertical touch pad would be more efficient. The iPod circle was tiring to scroll and you don't get momentum. It's also one direction, a surface is two directions. I figured they'd do something like the following. The thumb scanner wouldn't look like that, it would just just be a sensor area. That would be to authenticate things without typing a password and to verify age:
The main body of the controller would be a touch surface, possibly covered in glass. This would make it easier to input text too. There was a video game a while ago that used a single thumbstick to enter text and it did it like this in a spiral:
Text can be entered using a vertical swipe and horizontal swipes can switch categories like numbers, letters, punctuation. You'd just swipe vertically down a list in a similar way that you swipe down the letter column on contacts on an iPhone. With Force Touch, they can distinguish between hovering and pressing but they can also just do swipe to highlight and release to enter. Autocomplete would popup suggestions and the touch area can be used to jump up to the autocomplete part. They can also let you scrub over a virtual keyboard with the surface.
That controller would need to be any bigger than the current one though. If it was a full gaming controller, like this then it would be bigger:
but I don't think a normal touch remote would have to be bigger unless the touch surface impacted the battery more.
You're right, I had forgotten about scrolling momentum (something that the iPod did not have). But without momentum, I'd say that the scroll wheel is less tiresome than a mini vertical trackpad for scrolling long lists.
These are interesting concepts that you have, but I'm wondering how it could work in practice, would there be a cursor on the screen? How would it differentiate between scrolling and pointing?
There wouldn't be a cursor, it would just use selected states. If you enable a text input box, it would show a character entry method and on dismissing this via an option on the virtual keyboard, a Force Touch or one of the buttons, it would switch to selecting content boxes. The two buttons can always be used to represent moving down a UI level and back up.
They have an icon view just now where making a movement on the controller changes the selection state from one icon to the next. That covers choosing between apps. To do a search, you'd just move over to the search box and press to enable it and up would come the text input method. You then do the gestures to input text (or Siri) and the play button can enter the search and the menu button can release the search or use an option on the virtual keyboard to dismiss it.
The current UI has well-defined levels so once an icon/app is selected, it's just a horizontal menu up top and every time you enter another level, you are just panning around lists of items with selectors around them and the menu button is used to just back up to the next UI level:
[VIDEO]
[VIDEO]
Touch would allow pinch zoom too, which can scale UI objects up or down e.g small/medium/large. It could allow it to run a web browser. By default touch would scroll the page but a force touch can switch to selecting objects on the page like links and input boxes.