Multitouch clickwheels may be coming to future iPods
Though the iPod touch has been a great success, it seems there's still plenty of life in Apple's clickwheel-based iPods. Apple maybe adding advanced multitouch gestures to them with modified clickwheels, according to a recently published patent application.
The application, filed last September, details a number of ways to increase the number of sensing areas underneath a clickwheel to enable a variety of multitouch gestures. Current clickwheels have sensors arranged in a radial pattern, and work by sensing a finger moving from one to the next around the wheel. Apple's patent describes adding an additional loop of sensors around the wheel, as well as adding sensors underneath the middle click button.
The addition of these sensors would enable sensing more than one finger, which in turn enables a variety of multitouch gestures. Specifically, the application details moving one finger around the wheel while holding another on the center to zoom in and out of an image, for instance. Another example is swiping in a straight line across the wheel's surface to scroll a list or move from one image to the next.
Adding multitouch capabilities to the existing design of a clickwheel means Apple could add advanced interaction without radically altering either the form factor or the standard controls of current iPods. For instance, such advanced interaction could be used in a rumored iPod nano with an integrated camera. However, beyond adding more advanced interaction to more traditional iPods, the patent also shows a number of interesting ways to integrate a multitouch clickwheel interface into other devices. The patent application includes references to a mouse, a laptop, and even what appears to be an improved Apple Remote all sporting a multitouch-enabled clickwheel.
Of course, Apple patents plenty of things that never make their way into an actual Apple product. But it certainly is fun to imagine ways in which Apple might surprise us with where it might integrate a multitouch clickwheel—besides an obvious future iPod update.
From Arstechnica
