Apple demonstrates how to do touchscreen desktops
Patent application shows smarts
Here's a sign that Apple is not only thinking seriously about touchscreen iMacs, but that it has a rather smarter view of the technology than its rivals.
A just-discovered patent application - kudos to Patently Apple - shows not a touchscreen machine per se but a clever stand designed to make using a touchscreen desktop all-in-one a darn sight easier than it currently is.
Look at the picture and you'll see it's bloody obvious:
Yet of all the vendors currently pitching all-in-one desktop computers with touchscreens, not one has had the wit the figure out that users might also want a more shallowly angled screen.
Many Reg Hardware readers understand this and have commented in the site's forums that touchscreens are all very well, but they're not something you want to be stretching your arms toward for long periods of time.
Apple's patent application appears to understand that too and turns the iMac into a glorified tablet. ®
Review 21.5in iMac 2010
COMMENTS
There is.
If you read the page over ar patently apple, you will see that the patent is not for the stand at all.
Wait a minute...
"not one has had the wit the figure out that users might also want a more shallowly angled screen"
No, it's just nobody else thinks that such a - frankly obvious - design necessity deserves a patent.
We've had screens that tilt for some years now...
Patent madness.
Tilt
I'm hoping there's more to the patent application than 'look! look! you can tilt the touchscreen!'
What leads you to believe ...
that Tyco monitor is capable of causing the attached CPU to switch OSes and input methods based on the screen angle?
Either the majority of posters haven't got a clue what terms like "prior art" actually mean ... or else they just look at the pics, skip the article and write posts based on their existing prejudices.
Article & Comments Completely Miss the Point!
The innovation here is not the bloody hinge ... it's that the hinge has sensors, so that when the screen is angled horizontally the computer switches from an OSX device to an iOS device! When you tilt it back up, it goes back to your OSX session.
There is no prior art on that folks.
