Comments on: Company Suing Apple Shows Off Multi-touch on Android

By: BillH

BillH — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:53:44 +0000

Steve Jobs is a marketing genius but he is not an engineer. He can claim that Apple invented everything in iPhone including multi-touch. The truth is that I saw the multi-touch UI first in the movie “Mission Impossible I” and later at Microsoft, the “Surface”. So Apple will eventually lose the suits.

By: Abrown

Abrown — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:56:50 +0000

Screw Apple, they suck…I’m sick of Steve Jobs and his arrogance, whining and making a big deal about something he didn’t invent; As well as deriding everyone else’s efforts just because it’s “not the iPhone” or “not a Mac.” It’s about time someone stood up to Apple and all the crap they give everyone else. I just hope this turns out good for everyone and not just for Elan Microelectronics. If they’re just trying to take Apple’s place as the a-holes of multi touch then I hope they crash and burn.

By: rigamrts

rigamrts — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:54:39 +0000

guys apple did not steal the mouse from xerox they stole the windows style os and windows stole the os at the same time. jobs and gates were both at the same meeting where it was shown. both were given a copy freely by xerox to play with. xerox was in the copier bussiness not the os bussiness at the time they really did not know what they had. apple was the first to inmplement it into the lora.
Douglas Engelbart got the patent for the mouse in 1970 not xerox.

By: Hunter

Hunter — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:33:13 +0000

Apple stole the mouse from xerox, and then microsoft stole it from apple. 20 years later Apple steals multi-touch Elan, and then palm steals it from them. This time however the original inventor is actually doing something about it.

By: Kalon

Kalon — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:31:29 +0000

Multi touch would be cool but Rich has a good idea. Perhaps manipulation similar to blender (blender.org).

By: Rich

Rich — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:30:34 +0000

Yeah I’d rather have a “1 handed expansion” of my maps or pictures. Simply hold your finger on the spot you wish to enlarge, and drag your finger toward the edge of the screen effecively stretching the image with only a 1 finger touch, and use the back button to return it to it’s normal ratio.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:59:11 +0000

I still don’t see the everyday use of multi touch phones. People always tell me look and see how cool this is and I can zoom in and out but then again you have double tapping there anyway. Instead of this “cool” feature I’d rather have them focus on other aspect of the phones (battery efficiency, processors etc)

By: JMB-GNR

JMB-GNR — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:42:36 +0000

Multi touch is as old as 1985, when Bill Buxton introduced it: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=317456.317461

I don’t see why Apple claims this interaction-type :S

By: shinobi-wan

shinobi-wan — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:15:18 +0000

To quote chester cheetah: ‘aye aye aye, crunch!’ Yes, we need this. IMO if we get multi-touch and all the new updates, the upcoming iphone is going to be behind android right from the start of leaving the gate.

By: Jochen

Jochen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:00:51 +0000

OMFG

Me sucky sucky for such a devicey!

By: babyBIGboss

babyBIGboss — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:07:18 +0000

well for me i think multi touch is aswome just becuase the screen is small doesent mean nothing and i hoope we get multi touch woooo go google

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:26:10 +0000

I’m not sure Apple is going to be able to hold on to multi-touch anyway as Microsoft displayed it with surface and Apple did nothing to defend their patent…if they even had it then. I doubt a patent on specific use such as a smaller screen is going to hold up.

Either way I don’t care. I really don’t see a need for multi-touch on a tiny screen. I often navigate my G1 with my thumb in one hand. I don’t want to have to hold it with two hands just to do a two finger gesture. I much prefer the zoom mechanism in the Steel browser or the circular one shown on the Magic. But to be honest with the Chrome-lite and Steel browsers I don’t find myself needing to zoom in and out all the time. I actually wonder why iPhone users do it so often.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:39:51 +0000

I wouldn’t be surprised if, or when he wins that his company joins the OHA, if they do would that mean that multi touch will become open source and Apple won’t have a one up on anyone anymore? Let hope to god.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:33:07 +0000

Quote: Would it be safe to assume that an Apple Spy went to one of their expo’s and stole the technology that we’ve all come to know as the “Multi Touch from Apple”?

No. I doubt any technology was stolen. At most, the idea was stolen. How hard is it to come up with the idea of being able to use more than one finger on a touchscreen? Something so obvious shouldn’t even be able to be patented.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:11:49 +0000

Drool.