Apple patent suggests the return of the scrollwheel (with light feedback)
January 25th, 2008Apple has filed a patent which indicates a new generation of iPods equipped with scrollwheels providing feedback using illumination of the wheel itself. The illustration accompanying the patent shows a scrollwheel of the familiar design which glows brighter the greater the scrolling input from the user’s finger.
The patent was published yesterday (24th January 2008) by the US Patent & Trademark Office and is entitled “Illuminated touch pad”. The patent lists the following ways in which light would be used in the proposed scrollwheel:
- Changing intensity with the speed of scrolling
- Different areas of the wheel lighting up depending on where the user touches it
Apple makes a great number of patent applications which never see the ‘light’ of day and this may be one of them as the proposal seems to offer very little return on the investment required in re-tooling and design. But we just might see this idea appearing on multi-touch pads on iPods and MacBooks in the future.
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Tags: ipod-classic, multi-touch, patents, scrollwheel, touch-technology, user-interface,
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