News tagged ‘multi-touch’

Early in the morning Apple has updated its entire line of iPods for fall 2010, thereby providing iPod touch with the same characteristics as iPhone 4 has. iPod nano will get multi-touch screen, and iPod shuffle - buttons.

Apple has already released new commercials: one for iPod nano and another one for iPod touch. These commercials show major innovations for iPod that were introduced during its development.
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Apple hosted their media event today and announced a number of new products and updates:

• Apple announces all new iPod models:

1. iPod Shuffle with the new VoiceOver button on top, which allows users to hear the name of the currently playing song and to switch between songs, playlists or Genius Mixes- the iTunes feature
2. iPod Nano with multi-touch display and without Click Wheel, with built-in FM radio and new feature "Shake to Shuffle," giving music lovers the ability to shake their iPod Nano to shuffle to a new song in their music library
3. Thinner iPod Touch with Retina Display, forward-facing camera and Apple's A4 chip

• Apple introduces updated apple TV
• Apple releases iTunes 10 with 'Ping' Social Networking and Open/Minimize/Close buttons are vertically oriented
• Apple announces pending release of 4.1 and 4.2 preview
• The iPod Classic is still for sale but with no changes
• The new iPod Touch's back camera takes still photos at a disappointingly low 960x720 resolution
• The impressive game demo by Epic Games is now available on the App Store as a free download
• The new iPod nano has no camera and apparently can't play video any longer

A new touch panel has been developed by Hitachi, which could make the use of iPhones much simpler, since it enables input by finger, glove or pen.

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Yesterday new unknown Apple product was approved by Federal Communications Commission.  Page 45 in the FCC documents reveals that the product is named as a"Bluetooth Trackpad". It's a rectangular shaped device with a model number of A1339. It can connect to a MacBook via Bluetooth, but Wi-Fi or cellular data wireless radios were not mentioned in the filings.

The documents about this device were submitted to the FCC last October, the same time when its initial testing was completed.

Last year it was rumored that Apple prepares a multi-touch standalone trackpad style device which was called as the "Magic Trackpad". Looks like this is finally it.

Gene Munster, who is an analyst at Piper Jaffray, told yesterday that Steve Jobs won't allegedly make a surprise with presentation of the next generation iPhone at the WorldWide Developer Conference 2010. Because of numerous prototype leaks everybody expects the iPhone 4G to have thinner design, front-facing camera, improved battery and 5MP rear camera. But Gene claimed people should not expect that a Verizon-compatible model will be presented.

"We believe that it is unlikely that the next generation iPhone will be available at Verizon (or Sprint) at launch; rather, it is more likely that it remains exclusively available at AT&T in the U.S. at launch".

He also said Apple may start selling iPhone 3GS for $99 instead of iPhone 3G and provide a "limited demo" of new version of Mac OS X (10.7), that has all chances to support multi-touch technology as a key feature. But as we wrote before it looks like WWDC2010 will focus mainly on iPhone OS 4.0 so the preview of Mac OS X 10.7 will not allegedly happen.

Gene is assured that the presentation of iPhone 4G will have a positive influence on Apple's stock.

"...the new iPhone will likely drive unit sales beyond Street expectations, providing a positive catalyst for shares of AAPL in the coming months."

Here is a demo of a multi-touch three dimensional touch-sensitive tablet in 1985 (!!!):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWpuHGUP26o

Microsoft has finally revealed its two new mobile devices named Kin One and Kin Two. They work on Windows Phone 7 OS and have a capacitive display with multi-touch support, custom browser (based on Zune version and has no Flash and Silverlight) and no third-party apps support.

Kin One that was earlier known as "Turtle" is a square slider with a QVGA display, 5 MP camera , LED flash, 4GB storage drive and QWERTY keyboard. Kin Two, more known as "Pure", differs by its landscape form factor, HVGA display, 8 MP camera and 8GB storage. But the experience in both of the products is almost the same. Kin One and Kin Two have 3G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.

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New forecast published by iSuppli on Friday revealed that approximately 14.4 million iPads will be sold in 2011 and 20.1 million - in 2012. This year won't make a sales record because most of the consumers will buy it for its unique touch-screen. By 2011-2012 the device will become more popular with the increasing number of App Store applications, declining prices and improved functionality, so people will more clearly understand its possible purposes.

But iSuppli claims the research to be "conservative", because it doesn't take into account unforeseen features that Apple can quickly add to iPad to boost sales (for example, integrating Adobe Flash support). However the numbers rely on a patented multi-touch technology that will mainly define the popularity of a new device.

iSuppli director of monitor research Rhoda Alexander admires iPad:

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In a week after the story about the lawsuit Oppenheimer analyst Yal Reiner wrote a research note, where it is said that Apple started warning Motorola and HTC in as early as January 2009. The Cupertino's company was not so happy to see that rivals' new products look like iPhone (or at least use the same concepts).

Apple COO Tim Cook even commented on this situation:

"Apple will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal".

The words were presumably about Samsung, LG and Nokia (Palm is not mentioned as its sales numbers are not so considerable).

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Patently Apple reports that Apple filed for the 'magic trackpad' trademark. US Patent & Trademark Office published application on February 26, 2010. 'Magic Trackpad' likely refers to an external peripheral device for desktop computers or laptops plugged into external displays. There has been speculation about some sort of multi-touch "trackpad gadget" from Apple. Maybe Apple will provide desktop users a way to take advantage of some external multi-touch system.

The application requests registration in International Class 009 under a number of categories relating to computer hardware and software, as well as several types of peripheral devices:

International Class 009: Computers; computer software; computer operating system software; computer utility software; computer hardware; computer peripherals; scanners; touchscreens; keyboards; computer mice; trackballs; trackpads; touchpads; light pens; joysticks; game controllers; graphics tablets; digitizers; cables and connectors; flash memory drives; USB drives; solid state storage devices; barcode readers.

Antonio De Rosa is creating something new every day. Today he shows us a new image and a 3D video which shows both the iPhone 4G and a new docking station called AluStand. There is also a new Remote Control with multi-touch surface.

Here's the video:

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In this last post we'll tell you about new Drivesavers instructive app, virtual iPhone planetarium, papershow tool for making presentations, Inklet software to turn Mac multi-touch trackpad into a drawing tablet and a tool for creating your own iPhone apps.

Free DriveSavers Hard Drive Disk-aster Simulator app for the iPod Touch and iPhone is a new way to study how a hard disk works. It teaches in interactive fashion about all the things that may crash a drive, what happens during a seized motor, clicker failure, SSD failures, contamination and head crashes. Also you’ll learn how the data recovery gets done and see the inside of a hard disk. That looks pretty instructive.

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From now on sausages are not the only substitutes for human fingers; Electrorack presented an interesting rack enclosure for Xserves; Shake allows you to listen music without earphones; U-Socket solves a problem of USB-rechargable devices.

As you remember few days ago we wrote about sausages as the best substitutes of human fingers for iPhones. Well now it is not. Two companies at once presented their capacitive capable gloves that allow you to use iPhone even when it's cold. iTouch Gloves offered high end leather gloves (start with  $99.95, on the left side) and Telefingers offered thinner, less stylish and cheaper solution (for only $15, on the right side).

That really looks like oversized Mac Pro, but indeed this is a rack enclosure for Xserves and RAID configuration presented by Electrorack. The latter also offers a variety of other server racking solutions.

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US patent organization just granted Apple a patent filed back in 2004 on capacitive multitouch displays. Patent #7,663,607 describes a "transparent capacitive sensing medium configured to detect multiple touches or near touches that occur at the same time" by way of two sandwiched layers of conductive lines hooked up to an appropriate circuit, and also covers a specific type of multitouch display with a similar two-layer capacitive sensor made of glass.

There are other types of capacitive sensors on the market, but Apple's touchscreen is still the best. While the implications of this patent are still unclear, it's certainly gives hard times for many Apple's competitors.

[via]

Google released a software update for Android-based Nexus One smartphones. The update offers a number of enhancements, but the most interesting one is a support of the multi-touch technology in phone's Browser, Gallery and Maps applications. The new functionality is called "pinch-to-zoom".

Google previously had an agreement with Apple, that Android OS would not support multi-touch in the U.S. Now it looks like all the agreements are gone.

Engadget posted a video of the Nexus One's pinch-to-zoom functionality: