14 DAY TRIAL // Apple's multi-touch interface for the iPhone is what really drives the device's user experience and the company is well aware of this. While the iPhone interface may be revolutionary, it is only the first step and Apple is preparing to use the technology for all it's worth.
The US Patent & Trademark Office has recently published Apple's patent application titled Multi-touch Gesture Dictionary. As can be deduced from the title, the patent details how gestures can be interpreted in various ways to form a veritable dictionary of commands that can be used to interact with any given device. While the word dictionary implies a great many such commands, Apple doesn't seem to be creating a set of arcane gestures, instead building on a few basic gestures and giving them context specific meaning and creating variations based on the number of fingers used.
While Apple's technology could be used to interpret hundreds of different gestures, it is unlikely that this will ever be the case. The gestures themselves are few and accessible, such as dragging in any of the four directions, rotating the fingers or simply contracting or expanding the fingers. However, these simple gestures can have various meanings depending on the application and the number of fingers used. In one example, the pinch gesture currently used for zooming out on an iPhone could also be used for copying and pasting information, simply by using another finger in addition to the index one.
There is obviously a lot of room for growth here, not only because of the possible number of gestures, but also because the patent describes how these gestured could be customized by the user or by a developer to have specific meaning that are better suited to the application at hand. Whatever the potential for growth, the first iteration of such a control method would probably only have a few core gestures, with other being added as time passes and people become more proficient at using them.