14 DAY TRIAL // With Apple’s evolving multi-touch notebook trackpads, one of the company's latest published patents comes as no surprise. In the filing, the iPhone maker discloses means for optional functions that could provide useful shortcuts to iPhone and iPod touch users.
Apple's invention generally relates to input systems, methods, and devices aimed at simplifying the use of the iPhone's keyboard. More particularly, the invention has to do with means of interpreting manual swipe gestures as input in connection with touch-screen keyboards. From the US Patent & Trademark Office, the company's description of the invention goes:
Systems, methods, and devices for interpreting manual swipe gestures as input in connection with touch-sensitive user interfaces that include virtual keyboards are disclosed herein. These allow for a user entering text using the virtual keyboard to perform certain functions using swipes across the key area rather than tapping particular keys. For example, leftward, rightward, upward, and downward swipes can be assigned to inserting a space, backspacing, shifting (as for typing capital letters), and inserting a carriage return and/or new line.
Various other mappings are also described. The described techniques can be used in conjunction with a variety of devices, including handheld devices that include touch-screen interfaces, such as desktop computers, tablet computers, notebook computers, handheld computers, personal digital assistants, media players, mobile telephones, and combinations thereof.
Besides the finger swipes depicted in the patent imagery (pictured above), other gestures could be implemented for multiple functions, such as single, double, or three-finger swipes to the left and right, for selecting, or deleting portions of text. In fact, Apple itself suggests this is the case, noting that the invention can relate to a method of interpreting swipe gestures, including “detecting a swipe gesture across the virtual keyboard, determining a direction of the swipe gesture, and performing a predetermined function determined by the direction of the swipe gesture.”
Should the company's patent materialize, iPhone and iPod touch users can expect the new functionality in an upcoming firmware update. No hardware upgrades should be necessary to implement the new gestures.
