hmm, not everything should be patentable (if thats a word).

This Rocks. gona need a bigger track pad though.

agree.... but look at Monsanto, those assholes want to patent RICE, and everything else you eat, including all types of seeds.... those bastards need to be stopped. Fuck Monsanto!

Interesting, but I hope Apple realizes that Microsoft already owns the patent on the 3-fingered salute.

Does nobody remember "Fingerworks"? They had all of this and more years ago. It is a strange world where one company can go byebye, while another one re-patents its secrets...

oh wait: the patent was written by Wayne Westerman of Fingerworks. Kewl.

@okeribok:
And Apple purchased Fingerworks, so I think it's safe to assume that all of the Fingerworks tech will make it to future Apple products

@okeribok:

Of course I remember fingerworks. I still use their trackpad for my main input mouse device! In fact, if my unit ever fails I dunno what I will do for a mouse because I am totally spoiled by it. And fingerworks went bye bye because apple bought them out hook line and sinker. Perhaps apple is using the fingerworks tech feature by feature. And only releasing them as product revisions in answer to the competition. Apple had the freakin answer to cut n paste for the iphone before version 1 even came out!!!

I don't think this patent is anything close to what we'll get from Apple in the end. Way too many options, the purpose isn't immediately clear.

Huh. So are the people with missing fingers hosed?

Side note, the patent does not assume the system can tell the difference between fingers. The commands are determined by the relative position and direction of movement of whichever 'fingers' you use.

If only they will use that to implement copy and paste on the touch!

The touch has a wonderful browser and speedy interface but it lacks a lot of the pocket pc stuff I have grown accustomed to expecting.

*dreams of a SDK that will produce a task switcher, extra options... a good AIM* <_< but I think apple will need to implement this stuff as its part of the OS...

@olternaut: about the iphone:how do you know that?and what was the solution?i have a touch so i'm intrested.it seems true that apple holds stuff back

i wonder why my comments never make it up... ???

It's funny to see the word Expose without the little thing over the "e", cause then it just reads Expose, instead of "Expose-ay"

Well it looks kinda cool.
And im guessing that the program will compare the finger size. Now as we all know we're different and some people have fingers larger than others like a large pinky or somethinq.
I dont think that'll work out @ all.
And if they want to patent it i think they should work out some of the logical and common sense kinks.

You know that because it's an Apple device they will make a unique touch gesture for when the apple geeks rub their penis all over the screen in excitement.

Touch and Multi-touch gestures should not in and of themselves be patentable. There is prior concept, art and a lot of existing applications out there which make use of them in one way or another. It would be really a major blow to the world of user interfaces if one entity held a patent on the notion of multi touch and some more or less obvious gestures. I don't see for example how the 'pinch scale' gesture could be patentable now when it has been out in the wild and applied in other environments (like Jeff Han's interface prototypes, etc.). But at the same time the ridiculous patent awards of the last decade or so don't leave me much faith that Apple wouldn't be able to push through almost anything they wanted to pay for. Hopefully if they are awarded patents it would be a defensive vs. offensive move.