Imagine being able to touch your iPad or iPhone screen and feeling like you’re touching metal, wood, or fur — despite the fact it’s just a flat glass display. Impossible, surely? Not if a new haptic feedback patent Apple has filed comes to pass.
This haptic feedback technology could complete the sensory AR experience Apple is aiming for. Slap on some AirPods and summon up some ARKit visuals, and you’d have truly immersive augmented reality.
Apple invented an on-screen haptic keyboard with virtual keys that simulate movement, which should make typing a better experience.
A laptop’s hardware keyboard is great for text entry but is in the way when reading websites, watching movies, playing games, etc. That’s why Apple is exploring options for getting rid of the keyboard while maintaining the ease of typing offered by a physical keyboard.
Google has updated its excellent Gboard keyboard for iOS to add haptic feedback.
You will now feel subtle vibrations when you type, which help make on-screen keys feel more physical. Gboard is one of just a handful of third-party options on iOS that offer this feature.
HaptoClone is a new creation from researchers in the Shinoda Lab at the University of Tokyo that can let you practically feel what isn’t actually in front of you. It at least gives you the illusion that you’re feeling it. The technology is trippy in theory, but in practice it very well may lead to a more personal level of communication through our smartphones and computers – or dare I say more intimate.
Steve Jobs was famously opposed to including a stylus with the iPad, but even he might have changed his mind had he caught a glimpse of the futuristic texture-sensing input device Apple just patented.
According to a pair of patent applications published today, Apple is working on stylus with in-built camera which would allow it to detect the surface over which it is passed and reproduce these textures for the user — even down to replicating the feel of different fabrics.
The Force Touch technology seen in the Apple Watch and new MacBook is pretty great and all, but imagine being able to go further than the relatively simple haptic feedback Apple currently offers — by having your future Mac trackpad actually simulate different textures when you run your hand over it.
That’s the aim of a new patent application published today, which describes a new diamond-layered touch surface capable of using a variety of vibrations and temperatures to recreate a range of textures.
The iPad is great for making music, but the lack of physical keys can be a drag for keyboardists. That shortcoming prompted Adam Kumpf to hack together a miniature piano attachment for the tablet using nothing more than wooden clothespins, aluminum foil, a few pieces of stiff cardboard and some rubber bands
Total cost? Less than $5.
Despite his creation’s humble DIY origins, Kumpf thinks the idea of iPad add-ons has the potential to take touchscreens to the next level.
“There’s an innate desire that users have to go beyond what the screen can usually do,” the 31-year-old MIT graduate tells Cult of Mac. “I strongly believe that there’s a world of accessories relating to capacitive touchscreens that’s just waiting to be explored.”
LOS ANGELES — Drop this tactical-style vest onto your shoulders and fasten it high on your chest, and you’re suddenly feeling the action. Using audio-based haptic technology (the kind of rumbling vibrations that you’ll find in any video gaming controller), the KOR-FX turns the audio in the game into rumbles you can feel.
The makers of this new gaming peripheral have a few prototypes set up on the show floor at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles this week, and they’ll let all comers come and try a demo.
“Some people want to wear this thing lower on their chest, but up high is what stimulates the limbic system,” Seth Fandetti, CEO of Immerz (the makers of the KOR-FX) told us onsite at the expo. “It’s more than just feeling bullets hit you; it’s a whole immersive experience.”
One of the biggest criticisms of virtual keyboards on a touchscreen display is that they offers users no feedback, making them more difficult to type on than a traditional keyboard. Designers have attempted to provide solutions to this problem with third-party accessories that clip onto your display, but Apple may be working on its own solution using coded magnets and ferrofluids that could be built into future iPads.
