macnn
04/24/2008, 5:25pm, EDT
Thursday, April 24th
Three new iPhone input patents
The US Patent and Trademark Office today published several of Apple's patent approvals, all of which relate to different aspects of the iPhone's functionality. The first deals with organization of the iPhone's interface as to reduce the clutter of adding too many visual elements to a document. The patent seems to indicate the use of nested interface elements, such as clicking a button to summon a menu detailing operations that the user can perform.
The second patent demonstrates user input on the software keyboard and how the iPhone highlights the letter that was pressed, as well as how much time the button stays highlighted.
The third relates to gestures which can select, and consequently delete items using the touch screen. The process recognizes gestures to first edit the list, then select the item for deletion, and finally delete the item.
Filed under: iPhone, Apple, industry
Other story tags: patents, interface, organization
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Personally, I can think of a dozen different manners that could be used as gestures. Surely Apple engineers have some in the works.
Let's see; selecting something (an image on a web page, or a block of text somewhere) should be relatively easy. Press, hold, then drag (if text) or just press/hold (if an image or an object). Now, how do you copy, and how do you cut? Perhaps like this: press/hold/drag (to select); without lifting the finger, touch screen elsewhere with another finger and lift together, (more-or-less) simultaneously. Or, select text or object (press/hold/drag/lift finger); then pinch to cut, or swipe to copy.
I'm sure Apple has a bunch of very creative guys scratching their heads over this intensively and we'll soon finally get that cut/copy/paste functionality everyone's been complaining about.