Hello all,
    Gizmodo (originally UnWiredView) reports that the next generation of iPods will not be having the much rumoured touch screen, but a touch sensitive surface on its posterior surface.

    They report that “…the touch and screen dont have to go together…”

    So whats it all about? We have the normal front screen. Then we have the touch sensitive posterior segment - the part which is currently the shiny silver or black or whatever colour it is, with the Apple logo and stuff. THAT is the touch sensitive surface.

    So you dont touch what you see, but see what you touch. The touch sensitive surface tracks the physical pressure and motion by your fingers, taking slight motion as browsing the pointer, and applied pressure as clicks.

    Pretty neat eh?

    Gizmodo unearthed this from an Apple patent. They say that “Apple’s patent covers not just music and video navigation but phone controls and more”.

    Interested? Here’s the excerpt from the patent from Gizmodo -

“A hand-held electronic device, comprising: a first surface having a display element coupled thereto; a second surface having a touch-surface coupled thereto, the second surface not coplanar with the first surface, the touch-surface adapted to detect a location on the touch-surface contacted by an object and an activation force applied to the touch-surface by the object; and control means for–displaying on the display element first information, control elements, and mark representing the contact’s location on the touch-surface, determining when the mark is spatially coincident with one of the control elements, determining the activation force is greater than a specified threshold, and activating a function associated with the one control element.”

“The method includes displaying first information appropriate to the device’s function on a display element on a top surface of the electronic device (e.g., video, graphic or textual information), displaying one or more control elements and a cursor on the display element (e.g., numeric or alphanumeric keys, buttons, sliders and control wheels), adjusting the cursor’s displayed position in response to an object contacting a force-sensitive touch-surface on the device’s bottom surface, and activating or executing a function associated with one of the control elements when the cursor is positioned “over” the control element and a force is applied to the force-sensitive touch-surface at a position corresponding to the cursor. In a preferred embodiment, the control elements are displayed transparently so that the first information is not totally occluded by the display of the control elements. A program implementing the method may be stored in any media that is readable and executable by a computer processor.”

    The patent itself can be found here. Anyway, this technology calls for ultimate innovation! Who in the whole wide world would have thought of this extremely obvious solution to touch screen systems??? This system decreases physical space required, and increases fidelity. It works as some sort of hand held gaming console, but with a much easier interface and technique.

    Its almost as shifting something physical with a push. Push a stone, the stone moves. But here, move your hand, and the pointer moves! Its not an indirect movement like in the mouse, its a very direct movement.

    They say a human robot is a humanoid. So shall we call this a part of a roban(robot+human) technology?

    But, my view is, Apple isn’t planning this in the next generation. They’re planning it for the next next generation. Because the next generation seems too near for such an innovation, and too less a time to confirm a patent. We’ll wait and see…

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