Apple files patent for typo-sensing buttons Apple has patented a system for detecting when a user may have inadvertently pushed a button on a device. The filing describes a system for both physical and touchscreen buttons which detects where on the button a user is pressing, and makes corrections when the contact is believed to be accidental. "Contact with only this …
... this would have been of use to the customer of mine who, for the past week, has been ranting that his order hasn't arrived, only for me to get the parcel returned "Address incomplete" because apart from the first two letters, the Post Code he typed (on his iPad as it says at the bottom of his e-mails!) was one character transposed left or right or up.
So instead of XX3 1FH it came out as XX2 2DJ!
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I am sure that this was used on keyboards back in the 1980s and possibly before to stop double key presses and called something like the Double Roll over prevention.
Certainly interlocks have been used since a very long time, what is so different between this software version and the mechanical versions that existed since Noah was in short trousers - Oh heck will Apple now patent short trousers?
There is a system on the Jaguar XF glove box going back to the launch of the XF range that conceptually does what they are trying to patent- and given that cars tend to have protracted development times, I'd suspect it predates the 2008 filing.
But of course Cuppertino got it granted- the US Patent Office seems to think researching submissions is for wimps.
(Title to be read in a Lady Bracknell voice.)
Well, at least Apple have actually invented something here, rather than just patenting some pre-existing or obvious idea, but seriously, someone must have had their Complicator's Gloves on when they came up with this one. If you can sense that a button-press is unintentional electronically, then you can just discard/ignore it electronically. Adding a solenoid to make the button resist being pressed just seems stupid to me. One more thing to go expensively wrong.
Hang on, maybe that's Apple's real motivation here.
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