TouchUi
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Apple patent unearthed for touchscreen Macs that can flip between mouse and touch UIs with tilt of the screen
As far as we can tell, the general logic behind touchscreen iMac rumors goes something like this: "Apple is good at touch UIs, so it should build a touchscreen iMac." Unfortunately, the reality of a usable, desirable touchscreen desktop computers has yet to materialize (sorry, HP and Microsoft), and so far Apple has steered clear of those dangerous waters. An international patent recently unearthed at the World Intellectual Property Organization, however, shows just how Apple might go about a touch UI on a desktop computer. Basically, the patent covers the method of transitioning from a traditional "high resolution" UI (best operated by a mouse) to a "low resolution" UI suitable to finger operation (like iOS). A myriad of sensors can be employed to detect the user moving the screen into touch mode, and as the user does this the difficult high res bits like cursors and scrollbars and drop down menus "slide off the screen," leaving only a touch UI at the end of the transition. It's all very broad and vague, naturally, being a patent, but it's an interesting idea, and makes more sense than ruining the good thing desktop UIs have going with a tacked-on touch UI in the style of Microsoft's Windows. Of course, stuffing two UIs into one device also seems rather un-Apple like, so we're not going to start expecting an Apple-built touchscreen iMac or MacBook to act exactly like this until Steve gets on stage and starts telling us how we magical and revolutionary it is. %Gallery-100195%
Nokia's Series 40 to 'offer a compelling touch experience'
Even though it's lived a long, fruitful (some might even say wildly successful) life as Nokia's one and only high-end feature phone platform, Series 40 is suffering from a bit of an identity crisis now that S60 pushing deeper than ever into categories traditionally considered dumbphone strongholds -- one needs to look no further than the C5 to see that strategy in action. So, what's next? Quite a bit, actually. Cellularmania appears to have gotten hold of an official document assuring developers that the company is continuing to drop money into taking Series 40 to the next level this year, promising a "compelling touch experience" along with confirmation of earlier rumors that we'd see dual-SIM devices for certain markets where it's a big deal. It's still unclear what kind of mix we're going to see in Nokia's product portfolio 5, 2, or even a single year from now, but Series 40's still got a seat at the table -- for now, anyway.
Picture of N95 with touch UI leaves us confused, hot with passion
So Mobile Review's got its Sony Ericsson G700 review up in all its epic, War & Peace-style glory that the site is so well known for. Don't get us wrong, that's all well and good; it's an interesting phone and there's no question that we'll get around to reading the sucker from beginning to end in the near future. What really has our immediate attention, though, is one of the test photos taken with the G700's camera depicting some sort of touch user interface on a Nokia N95. Judging from everything we've seen of Nokia's own S60 touch UI, we can say with confidence that this ain't it; besides, the N95's design language is dead (just take one hard look at the N96 to confirm it) so we can't imagine some future device out of Espoo retrofitting a touchscreen onto an N95's shell. So what's going on here? Even if it's a third-party program, it can't work. It just can't. Or can it?[Via Perpetuum Smoking Mobile]Update: Turns out this is from the new Knight Rider series. Cars with Mac keyboards, modified N95s with touchscreens -- what other implausible goodies do these guys get? Thanks, everyone!
Hands-on with Nokia's S60 touch UI at MWC
Move along, nothing too new and thrilling here. We hunted down Nokia's touch demo and were completely un-thrilled by the whole package. Sure, it's still early days for the interface, but it's a case of same old same old as it's sporting the same UI, same OS, but now instead of using the d-pad, you're able to poke about with your finger. The demo was running on a small tablet in software only, no hardware yet, though, as we've already mentioned, devices should start arriving in the second half of the year. Hopefully Nokia will see the error -- in our opinion -- of its ways and drop some glitz -- feel free to pop on over and visit NVIDIA for some inspiration, Nokia -- down on this fairly glitz-free bit of wizardry. Follow the juicy teaser below to see the gallery.%Gallery-16054%
