Apple patent filing details touchscreen tablet
By Nilay Patel 
posted August 29th 2008 4:04PM
posted August 29th 2008 4:04PM
[Via AppleInsider]
posted August 29th 2008 4:04PM
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Considering I have a Convertablet that works great...
Welcome to the year 2000 Apple....
I think that this is an old patent, just now getting put through the government because, that is a really old version of itunes!
yep...clearly the choice of "professional artists".
Hey, umm...
If anyone was wondering...
This is for the glass track pad on the new macbook pro design.
OMGNOWAI! R u SuRE? ThAt would B teh HotNEss!!!!!!11
That's pretty cool! So it's going to be hideous-alien-scratch-proof, too?
More touch screen crap...where's the holographic projections and Holodecks from Star Trek. Looks like you can't use this anyway unless you are a zombie, have zombie hands, or in an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Figures.
Holy broken fingers Batman! Is that a poor drawing of a hand, or an accurate drawing of the hand of the "missing link"?
I guess that's what happens when Thing from the Adam's Family mates and has a child with a bowl of spaghetti.
The Adams Family... *click* *click*
Having a Windows version of iTunes makes these drawing even more realistic!
Copying Microsoft...just like 5 years too late however
"The touch of the dead" project...
U uber tech geeks still don't get it. You're all mystified over some weird hand illustrations. Here's the deal, we've known this was coming. In Jan/Feb? 2005 Stevie spoke about how educational institutions were wasting vast amount of resources printing textbooks, making college students pay semester after semester for the same content in the form of 'new' textbooks. He lambasted publishers and academia alike for their taking advantage of captive student's 'needs.'
Imagine having an iPhone/iPod Touch 'like' device only larger.
Windows is a desktop/laptop OS, however, MS has tried to put it on handhelds and tablets only to fail time and time again.
Apple built an entirely new OS interface (based on OS X) that works great on handhelds....and presumably would work great on a tablet/ iBook.
With the iTunes digital distribution mechanism already in place, they've no doubt got a winner in the makings....the challenge will be to get the publishers lined up.
Listen..."dude"....
Yeah, Steve Jobs talked about how text books are too expensive. In the same speach he said that everyone should send their kids to private schools and we should stop having state-funded education. Don't take everything he says as gold.
And what in the Great Big World makes you think that Apple would do ANYTHING to change the textbook publishing market? What, they're going to make a (subjectively) pretty, $2000+ gadget that lets you read books on computers? News flash, it exists, it's called SOFTWARE. You don't need a dedicated device to read eBooks, one of any number of eBook readers exist. It isn't a technological hurdle that the publishing industry can't get over, it's the mountains of money. What possible impitus could textbook publishers have for releasing cheaper textbooks, in a format that's more easily copied/stolen, You aren't paying for the printing/shipping costs for your textbook, you're paying for the content. That won't get cheaper just because it's sold as a download. If anything (including Apple's music/movie history), it'll be slightly more expensive, charging for the "convenience" of having it. There are also many other sticking points in the move to a digital textbook distribution. What about payment to the authors? A digital version is a new publication and will probably involve paying past authors again. And Apple's "digital distribution" is a user's nightmare (compared to a book), you can't share with friends, can't lend it to someone, you can't re-sell it when the class is over, and they still have some of the absolute worst DRM available. What if you were told you could only read your book in 1 in 30 buildings on campus?
And what makes you think Apple can make a tablet work any differently than the dozens and dozens of others out there? I am using one right now (HP Pavilion tx 1000) and it works great. What is Apple going to add...the ability to write/sketch anywhere? Email your sketch overlays? Create complex "notesheets" with intelligently linked data to other notes and documents?
BAM: Microsoft InkSeine. Price: FREE.
http://research.microsoft.com/InkSeine/install.html
You know what feature it is missing though? The smug sence of superiority that ships with every Apple product. Apple is not some design God that can come into any market a novice and completely revolutionize it. When it tries, you get shitty devices that people don't really want. Remember the AppleTV? Remember the Newton? Remember the iPhone? People who don't really understand market scope and customer needs seem to think every new Apple product is gold and perfect for everyone, but Apple always addresses a very, VERY small market segment. Expect this tablet to be just like the Air - expensive, high on style, low on substance, and ignored by 98% of the US, and more than 99% of the world, and basically sold as an "also-have" product.
And on a copmletely unrelated note, what the hell is patentable about a multitouch tablet? If this one doesn't get struck down by prior art or obvious, I'm siding with the guys at TechDirt.com and claiming the patent system is completely broken.
god forbid i ever have to contort my hands like that to use a computer
Interesting, but now I am going to have to learn all these touch commands.. I hope I can do this.