Apple patents keyboard with click wheel
updated 12:40 pm EDT, Thu April 12, 2007
Click wheel keyboard
Apple has filed for a continuation patent that details accelerated scrolling via the iPod click wheel, but the description and drawings that make up that filing also point to the inclusion of an iPod scroll wheel in place of a keyboard's numeric keypad. "The keyboard apparatus includes a plurality of keys and a rotational input unit. The rotational input unit allows a user to perform a rotational movement with respect to the rotational input unit," Apple writes. "The rotational movement (rotational user input) can then be processed by the electronic circuitry of the computer system and used to manipulate navigation or selection actions with respect to a graphical user interface being presented to the user on the display device."
"The keyboard apparatus can also include a button associated with the rotational input unit. As shown in FIG. 7A, the button can be provided at a center region of the rotational input unit. However, the button is not required and, if provided, can be placed elsewhere, such as outside the periphery of the rotational input unit."
It is...
04/12, 01:16pm reply
It is a keyboard for your Apple TV. Sounds like we are going to have a lot fun soon.
Gepard
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Sep 2000
Who writes their patents?
04/12, 02:12pm reply
"The rotational input unit allows a user to perform a rotational movement with respect to the rotational input unit.'
Maybe I should send them my resume...
Macola
Mac Elite
Joined: Mar 2001
lol!!!!
04/12, 03:53pm reply
"The keyboard apparatus includes a plurality of keys and a rotational input unit. The rotational input unit allows a user to perform a rotational movement with respect to the rotational input unit," Apple writes."
GOLD!!!
FastAMX79
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Sep 2000
You've got to realize
04/12, 04:13pm reply
that this gramatical formula is required in legal documents. It sounds a lot like the case reports my fiancée writes - dry and repetitive phrasing.
On another note, isn't this similar to shuttle k*** on a video editting specialty board? I'm seeing this as the apple aesthetic applied to that kind of design.
danviento
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Dec 2005
Cancel or Allow?
04/13, 01:55am reply
Apple wants to send you a salutation…
manleycreative
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Sep 2005
Patend this...
04/13, 10:34am reply
A touchpad or trackpad unit capable of universal scrolling when using multiple touches from any two body parts allowing the movement of these touches to coincide with the desired global scrolling direction.
Oh yea, and two fingers allow right clicking too.
Deal
Mac Enthusiast
Joined: Apr 2001
Useless? Eh?
04/13, 06:48pm reply
[For consumers, the old standing keyboard numeric pad has little to no value whatsoever]
Nothing could be fiurther from true. To read this at tax time is especially laughable!
Turbo Tax, Excel, for gamers (I live on the keypad in Empire), for media types, (Final Cut Pro for multicam switching), et al...
Save the cute clicky wheel for little boxes.
- lsm
Loren
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Mar 2001