Apple patents aren't always an indicator of the tech just around the corner, but it doesn't stop the rumour mill latching onto them as evidence of such. The latest report to spring up is Apple's apparent plans to introduce motion sensor gesture controls into future iOS devices and redesign the way a user interacts with a 3D …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections

This topic is closed for new posts.

Monday 16th January 2012 10:34 GMT Anonymous Coward

This would be a step backwards

The iPad lets you touch stuff. This is direct interaction with your data, near enough, and that has to be the ultimate goal in computing.

That's not possible yet with 3D. If the UI is behind the screen, you can't touch it because there's a piece of glass in the way. If it's in front of the screen you can't touch it because there's only air where you see the image.

Because of that, I can't see this happening until somebody comes up with a method of doing touchable 3d.

0 0
Monday 16th January 2012 10:36 GMT Silverburn

Bollox to 3D. Where's my star trek style 3D-interactive-holigram-o-tron-o-matic thingy?

0 0
Monday 16th January 2012 10:44 GMT Wang N Staines

I suppose Apple has a working prototype when the patent is granted...

1 0
Monday 16th January 2012 11:12 GMT Tom_

Prior Art?

There are already numerous apps on the iPhone that do this. I guess they use the gyroscope, whereas the patent suggests using other hardware sensors. Is that it?

1 1
1. Monday 16th January 2012 11:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Not sure it's exactly the same, but I had a fairly entertaining game on my iPhone called Holotoy, if I remember correctly. You moved a ball around a 3D space by tilting your phone one way and another
  
  0 0
2. Monday 16th January 2012 11:35 GMT Dan 10
  
  more sensors
  
  I think they're going further than that. So you have a 3d image of a car on the screen - rather than pressing a soft button marked rotate or dragging across the screen, you hold your hand in front of the screen and rotate it in mid-air, minority-report-style (without gloves, presumably).
  
  If you think about this on the sides of the device rather than the front, it gives Apple the ability to blend their minimalist style with all the functionality of buttons on the side, via some sort of gesture movement next to the device in order to perform specific functions.
  
  Just my interpretation, mind.
  
  0 0
  1. Monday 16th January 2012 16:35 GMT Duncan Watts
    
    But isn't that just Kinect?
    
    1 0
Monday 16th January 2012 11:32 GMT Ryan 7

So how soon will it be

Before Trillian can turn your iPhone off by chucking a pencil in front of it?

2 0
Monday 16th January 2012 11:53 GMT Anonymous Coward

As usual

There's likely to be a ton of prior art. For a start, that guy who used the Wii controller to change the perspective of the stuff on screen actually demonstrated it, as opposed to filing yet more monopoly claims and simultaneously squealing about people "copying" and how "genius" their fruit-branded organisation is.

1 0
Monday 16th January 2012 12:44 GMT Jedit

"Apple patents aren't always an indicator of the tech just around the corner"

No, they're more commonly an indicator of existing tech created or dreamed up by someone else.

5 2
Tuesday 17th January 2012 12:33 GMT Anonymous Coward

No

Apple only uses tech where it simplifies usage, this is a patent that Apple takes for 2 different reasons.

1. Getting the market to guess what Apple is up to in wrong direktion

2. Having a patent may be useful in the Future.

It's not the first time that someone would try to mimic Apple patents in a product just because they think Apple has the next big thing going on. Apple knows this and has patented useless stuff before just for that reason.

Usually the patents they actually register for tech they use in a product is registered quite late and closer to release date of that patent. That is how I've found it.

0 0