Apple patents are the key to understanding the next generation of products. The latest submitted, by Wayne Westerman (of Fingerworks), is no different. This patent application shows diagrams directly relating to multi-touch on Mac OS X, illustrating a drop down control panel with advanced multi-touch settings. There are a series of 'chords', or combinations of different fingers, which to different operations. There are already basic multi-touch gestures instated in the Macbook/Pro's, but we can assume that those laptops are not equipped for the advanced gestures. The Macbook Air, however, may be able to adopt these through a software update.
This patent application effectively claims that the new multi-touch trackpads are sensitive enough to detect the various combinations of fingers which are being used. This opens up another world of functionality for Apple, and if the patents keep rolling in, it might be Apple-specific, which will really help to increase their market share. Mac-1 PC-0
Written by Will on February 20th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Apple and Chords and Gestures and Mac OSX and Macbook Air and Multi Touch.
Apple patents are the key to understanding the next generation of products. The latest submitted, by Wayne Westerman (of Fingerworks), is no different. This patent application shows diagrams directly relating to multi-touch on Mac OS X, illustrating a drop down control panel with advanced multi-touch settings. There are a series of 'chords', or combinations of different fingers, which to different operations. There are already basic multi-touch gestures instated in the Macbook/Pro's, but we can assume that those laptops are not equipped for the advanced gestures. The Macbook Air, however, may be able to adopt these through a software update.
This patent application effectively claims that the new multi-touch trackpads are sensitive enough to detect the various combinations of fingers which are being used. This opens up another world of functionality for Apple, and if the patents keep rolling in, it might be Apple-specific, which will really help to increase their market share. Mac-1 PC-0
Written by Will on February 20th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Apple and Chords and Gestures and Mac OSX and Macbook Air and Multi Touch.
I've been waiting for the first big Leopard update for a while now. Out of the box, it worked beautifully, but as is usual with operating systems, more and more problems developed over the first few months of release. Steve's customary update on the sales figures at Macworld was a comforting one- almost 5 million
A few of the features introduced by Leopard were left slightly undeveloped. Stacks were eye candy, rather than an efficient file organisation system, and whilst the coverflow file view is nice, the functionality isn't quite perfect.
You might think my expectations are a little high, and I would be the first to admit that Leopard shits all over Vista, a cheap imitation which can't even pull off the tricks that Apple mastered with Tiger, years ago. And its no coincidence that Apple's market share is rising rapidly- with the problems Vista presents, Apple's PC's are a perfect alternative, and thus Apple has seen an 'explosive' increase in Mac sales.
The newest seed is said to add a list view to stacks, numerous fixes including specifically to CoreGraphics, BackupCore, DVD Playback, File Systems and Web Content Filter. These are the kind of changes which make Apple that little bit different, and ensured that previous OS's were solid pieces of software, even at the end of their lifecycles. However, noticeably absent is the rumoured AirDisk backups, which were even a feature of the beta versions.
Perhaps Apple are keeping some of the bigger updates for the next seed. We shall see, but the improvements will only help to make Leopard into a more appealing operating system...
Written by Will on January 25th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Airdisk and Apple and Computer and Mac OSX and Macworld and Seed and Stacks and leopard and mac.
This patent application effectively claims that the new multi-touch trackpads are sensitive enough to detect the various combinations of fingers which are being used. This opens up another world of functionality for Apple, and if the patents keep rolling in, it might be Apple-specific, which will really help to increase their market share. Mac-1 PC-0
