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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Patent Application Points to Swipe Gestures for iPhone’s Virtual Keyboard

Apple may be adding useful swipe gesturing functionality to the virtual keyboard on the company’s mobile devices, according to a report at MacRumors.

Blogger Arnold Kim describes two potentially effective additions to Apple’s touch interface contained in a patent application filed yesterday with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Aside from the single finger swipes depicted in the diagrams below, multi-touch gestures (two and three fingers) could invoke other special functions. If a single finger left-swipe might delete a letter, a two finger left-swipe could delete a whole word, and a three finger left-swipe could delete a line. Similarly, a single finger right-swipe could add a space, while a two finger right-swipe could add a period. Up swipes and down swipes could also invoke different functions based on the number of fingers used.

As with Apple’s evolving multi-touch notebook trackpads, these optional functions could provide iPhone and iPod Touch users with useful and welcome shortcuts.


About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

Email the author | Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

4 comments

    Why hasn’t Palm disputed any of this? My recollection is they invented the “swipe” as a part of the user interface. Apple might be able to copyright or trademark some of this, but simply claiming patents on a left-swipe versus right-swipe versus diagonal seems pretty fishy. The multi-finger interface appears valid, but patenting specific motions is suspect. After all, why don’t I just file a patent for a double-finger loop? Then anyone who uses it has to pay me a royalty. If that works I’ll patent “Use of a single digit to evacuate mucus from olfactory canals.” Next time you pick your nose you’ll owe me a buck.

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    [...] Patent Application Points to Swipe Gestures for iPhone’s Virtual Keyboard (cultofmac.com) [...]

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