New "Gesture" Technology Patent

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
DailyTech is reporting on a patent that Apple filed for today, regarding a technology that would use touch (instead of a mouse) to process specific "gestures. DailyTech thinks it might be a sign of a tablet mac in the works. I'm particularly interested in the part about the "zoom" function. It reminds me of that very old 80's video Apple produced about future technology, with the professor.



Anyway, here's the article and here's the patent.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    tednditedndi Posts: 1,921member
    that was known as the knowledge navigator.



    video is here: http://www.bu.edu/jlengel/kn65kfs.mov



    That would rock!!!
  • Reply 2 of 11
    Quote:

    Originally posted by TednDi

    that was known as the knowledge navigator.



    video is here: http://www.bu.edu/jlengel/kn65kfs.mov



    That would rock!!!




    WOW!!! Yes, that surely would... That's how computing will be in the next 10-20 years!!! hurray...!!!



    Did Apple make this? If so, I'd like to have more details about it, like the reason and purpose it serves, etc... Is this Apple's vision of the future of computing?



    Any help would be appreciated (and we could start a new thread about this in the General discussion forum...
  • Reply 3 of 11
    aries 1baries 1b Posts: 1,009member
    A Tablet Mac? Hah!



    I think that Apple's engineers put pictures of Tablets into their patents just to play with us and to generate AppleTabletBuzz.



    A gesture control system was used to control alien space craft in Earth: Final Conflict. It exists now only as fantasy... like the Tablet Mac.



    AppleTabletBuzz: Generating EyesOnScreen since 2/27/1998 1.



    V/R,



    Aries 1B



    1On February 27, 1998 Apple announced it would 'discontinue further development of the Newton operating system and Newton OS-based products, including the MessagePad 2100 and eMate 300'.
  • Reply 4 of 11
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aries 1B

    A Tablet Mac? Hah!



    How about a MacTablet, use one of these and you'll feel better in the morning.
  • Reply 5 of 11
    If this is in any way connected with "MobileMe" patent than the device that would carry the OSX and allow it to run on any slave-PC as discussed in the thread > "Mobile Me" would not be iPod but rather a new product like this. It all makes sense now, either way Apple will ride the iPod trojan horse and throw mobile OSX and more products at us and PC users to give them first taste of the Apple. Very exciting indeed.
  • Reply 6 of 11
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    If they are just filing the patent now I think this may be a ways off. Like Years.
  • Reply 7 of 11
    shanmugamshanmugam Posts: 1,200member
    MacBook Nano

    MacBook Pico
  • Reply 8 of 11
    macroninmacronin Posts: 1,174member
    MacPad Pro - choice of 15" or 17" widescreen



    MacPad - 13" widescreen



    MacPad nano - 7" (or 8", unsure) widescreen (think a Jobsian Newton)



    Maybe the MacBook Pro was rushed, because Apple wanted to milk a few bucks off of both the consumer desktop & pro laptop markets; while putting the final touch on the new portable line, ALL tablets!



    Wait until you see the NEW iMacs, based on the 17" & 21" Cintiq LCD tablets...



    Wireless, with charger built into the docking cradle...



    Mmmm...



    ;^p
  • Reply 9 of 11
    Quote:

    Originally posted by alexluft

    Did Apple make this? If so, I'd like to have more details about it, like the reason and purpose it serves, etc... Is this Apple's vision of the future of computing?



    Any help would be appreciated (and we could start a new thread about this in the General discussion forum...




    This was Apple's vision of the future of computing in 1987, when the video was created. Obviously, this was way ahead of its time in its simulation of a Web-like data source, speech recognition, desktop video conferencing, tablet computing, unified messaging, etc.
  • Reply 10 of 11
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aries 1B

    A Tablet Mac? Hah!



    I think that Apple's engineers put pictures of Tablets into their patents just to play with us and to generate AppleTabletBuzz.



    A gesture control system was used to control alien space craft in Earth: Final Conflict. It exists now only as fantasy...




    like the Nintendo Revolution Controller. Or the Theremin.



    Seriously, though, determining hand gestures from a video feed isn't all that hard to do. It'll run comfortable on current computers, although getting it the computer to run this comfortably while performing other tasks is slightly harder.



    It also has an uncomfortably high error rate right now (similar to voice recognition/handwriting recognition, although there's less oppurtinities for error correction... ie, in sentence, a confusing word can be compared contextually to the rest of the sentence. Gestures, by nature, have a lot less contextual information.)
  • Reply 11 of 11
    kolchakkolchak Posts: 1,398member
    Based on looking at the patent text, it looks like nothing more than a slightly more advanced version of the unfortunately defunct iGesture products, which used multifinger gestures on a large trackpad. The iGesture could do all that, from expanding fingers for zoom, to "picking up" (cutting) items with a grasping motion, to rotating the hand for any function you want. The only difference is that iGesture had discrete command gestures. Apple's advance seems to be that you can flow from one command gesture to another without lifting the fingers off to finish a command. Could it be that Apple can finally make me give up my iGesture?
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