The Apple Magic Mouse already accepts multitouch gestures, although with Apple’s iOS devices featuring gyroscopes and accelerometers, we guess we can’t say we’re too shocked to learn that Apple might be interested in incorporating some of that into a mouse perhaps somewhere down the road. While it remains to be seen if such a device will be realized, at the very least we know that Apple has interest in it thanks to a patent discovered by the folks at Apple Insider.
According to the patent, it has been described as “Methods and apparatus for processing combinations of kinematical inputs”, which basically describes a system in which a device, such as a mouse, will be able to input commands to a computer not just by clicking or scrolling, but by tilting it, sliding it and etc.
As expected a number of sensors will be utilized in order to achieve this, such as gyroscopes, optical sensors, accelerometers among other things. For example sliding a mouse across the surface would cause the cursor to move, but if combined with another action, such as sliding a mouse that has been tilted onto its side could execute a completely different command.
The patent describes that the system can be programmable which means that these different gestures can be customized according to your needs, so tilting and sliding the mouse could be akin to you switching tabs in your browser, or alt-tabbing between applications and so forth.
To prevent accidental gestures, the patent suggests that a minimum velocity will need to be generated in order for the command to be registered. Sounds like an interesting patent and like we said, with the Magic Mouse already incorporating multitouch gestures, these features would seem like a logical next step. However as with the case with patents, it is hard to tell if Apple will ever realize this idea, but what do you guys think? Does this mouse sound like something you could be interested in?
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