A few days ago, Apple was awarded with the patent #7,479,949, titled "Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics". In other words, this means that there won’t be any handsets with Multi-Touch devices out of there other than Apple devices, at least in the U.S. This is especially also a bad day for Google and their Android OS, as it was one of the most promising competitors to Apples iPhone on the handset market.

The patent is a long and detailed description of the technology and was filled on April 11, 2008:

A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.

This can also mean the end of the Palm Pre which supports swiping and pinching.

Originally at World of Apple.

No related posts.