Let me play devil's advocate for a minute...

Posted Feb 3, 2009 13:45 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670)
In reply to: Let me play devil's advocate for a minute... by mattdm
Parent article: Apple's touch-screen patent

That's just silly. The wikipedia article on multitouch mentions the first gesture based multitouch product in 1982. Even the movie Minority Report that popularized multitouch and specifically the pinch gesture is from 2002, and at that time these interfaces were mainstream enough that there were several to draw inspiration from.

The patent in question is filed in 2008. Even Microsoft Surface is from 2007, the same year as the iPhone, and both products probably was severals years in the making.

All this is irrelevant, of course, as if we are to believe our editor this so-called "multitouch" patent doesn't even touch multitouch (pun intended).

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Let me play devil's advocate for a minute...

Posted Feb 3, 2009 16:38 UTC (Tue) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

I think Steve Jobs has also seen Minority Report. Of course it matters what the patent application is actually for.

What it seems to apply to (IANAL) is a device that is able to translate imprecise gestures into precise commands, through a touch screen of comparatively small size. Multi-touch functionality is indeed not at all one of the claims, but it is (of course) mentioned as a related application.