While we were lazying our way through the Christmas break, it seems the U.S. Patent Office were doing quite the opposite. They revealed this interesting new patent application from Apple called Swipe Gestures for Touch Screen Keyboards. Apple suggests the use of swipe gestures to be used on top of the iPhone’s on screen keyboard in order to provide the user with quick access to common keys.
Here’s a quoted example of how this new patent will be used practically…
For example, erasing and basic punctuation insertion, directional swipes (also referred to herein as “swipe gestures”) over the alphabetic keys can be used as an alternative to striking certain keys. Because the Space and Backspace keys are quite frequently used, they are logical candidates for the rightward and leftward swipes, respectively. Leftward and rightward swipes intuitively match the cursor travel caused by these symbols. Following this cursor movement analogy, the Enter/Return may be invoked by a downward swipe, and a Shift/Caps may be invoked by an upward swipe. Alternatively, as the Enter and Shift functions may be less frequently invoked, these may be substituted for other functions as well. One alternative mapping for the upward swipe, for example, could be to activate an alternative numeric and punctuation keypad or a particular punctuation symbol like an apostrophe or period.
While no actual realistic product has actually come up, you will probably be able to imagine that it’s much like Apple’s latest multi touch enabled MacBooks but I would say it sounds more suited for the advanced users and also those who will appreciate quick access shortcuts. Let’s face it, you’re not going to find an old granny that will remember precisely which combination of strokes to go for to launch certain application.
Remember the video of the Microsoft Surface PC which we showed earlier last year? If you were impressed with that, then you will be even quite excited to see the same multi-touch technology applied in the same fashion on to a laptop running the next version of Windows: Windows 7.
Julie Larson-Green from Microsoft demonstrated at the recent D6 Conference saying that Microsoft is using part of the multi-touch technology from the Surface PC to enhance Windows 7. The operating system the demonstration is running on is a Dell Latitude XL with Windows 7.
This demonstration is basically showing how Microsoft Surface could enhance Windows experience on future computers, Windows 7 to be specific. As most will know by now, Windows 7 is expected to arrive in 2010 (click here to catch up), but what are the chances of laptops / PC monitors with multi-touch functionality becoming a popular, widely used product by 2010? The answer is probably not very likely, but the fact that Microsoft has demonstrated that they can already apply this technology to laptops, I reckon it shouldn’t be too long before household PCs become like those in the Minority Report!
Enough of me rambling, here are some of things that were mentioned during an interview with two of Microsoft’s most important people, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer…
- Windows 7 is apparently months away, due late in 2009.
- Walt asks Ballmer if he’s worried about the next iteration of Mac OS X, which will likely be released before Windows 7. Is there a risk that the work you’re doing now with multi-touch will look dated when Apple (AAPL) releases its next OS?
Ballmer says he’s confident Microsoft will have fantastic Windows 7 PCs, regardless of what Apple’s got on the market. “There’s a lot in Windows 7, and our goal is to produce fantastic PCs with our hardware partners.”- The conversation turns to Windows 7, which Microsoft hasn’t said too much about. Clearly, the company has learned from the media beating it took over the defeatured and perennially delayed Windows Vista. Indeed, in a post to the Windows Vista blog today, Microsoft’s Chris Flore noted that Microsoft is being very careful about releasing details about Windows 7. “What is a little different today is when and how we are talking about the next version of Windows,” Flore wrote. “So, why the change in approach? We know that when we talk about our plans for the next release of Windows, people take action. As a result, we can significantly impact our partners and our customers if we broadly share information that later changes. With Windows 7, we’re trying to more carefully plan how we share information with our customers and partners. This means sharing the right level of information at the right time depending on the needs of the audience.”
