Apple is making quite a habit of patenting every conceivable brain wave they have at their Cupertino Headquarters. They love to patent inventions that they will probably never implement. But it does make shrewd business sense, because if they don't use them they can license them off to companies, which could use them – and in the process make a quick bit of profit for Apple.
Today's latest patent is, however, something they might actually use. The current crop of tablets use multipoint gesture controlled touchscreens to interactive with devices and makes for a intuitive user interface.
Well their latest patent looks to add a third dimension to such controls. The patent outlines a series of gestures based on intuitive "physics metaphours". We're not entirely sure what that means, but in laymen's terms it would allow users to control their device by making gestures over the screen, but most importantly, without actually touching the screen. Finally the smudging of touch screens could be a thing of the past.
With any of Apple's patents there’s no evidence that this will make it into any of their devices, but given time this could be a compelling way to control touch interfaces. In the future you could be interacting with devices just like in future thriller Minority Report where Tom Cruise interacts with a screen without actually touching it - with this tech it could actually become a possibility.
Other uses for this tech on future iOS device displays could enable users to create 3D objects and worlds by using simple 3D gesturing. The new 3D gesturing could control color and textures while allowing users to uniquely rotate objects to gain different perspectives of their designs. This is wild stuff that is bound to give Apple's competitors another huge headache.
The patent application was filed around the first quarter of 2010, when the original iPad was introduced.