Multi-Touch Technology And Where It’s Going Next…Oh And Apple Didn’t Invent It Either!
- January 15th, 2007
- 11 Comments
FingerWorks was started by two professors, Elias and Westerman, at the University of Delaware. The basics of FingerWorks technology is based on a large touchpad with a keyboard printed on it. Instead of forcing keys you simply touched them. To move the ‘mouse’ icon you simply place two fingers on the pad and move it around like the two finger scrolling function Apple uses on their laptops. What made the TouchStream special was the fact that it recognizes all 10 fingers of the human hand and where they were on the pad. It eventually evolved into the iGesture where certain finger/hand combinations and movements were programmed as commands. For example, placing 3 or more fingers down and twisting to the left would cause an Open File dialog to appear and twisting right would close the selected object or window. Another pretty cool command was spreading your fingers open and closed to zoom in and out of something.
Are you with me so far? Well back in February of 2005 FingerWorks mysteriously quit replying to support requests or responses were delayed significantly and retailers quit taking orders. Then in June of that year FingerWorks’ main page published “FingerWorks has ceased operations as a business.” FingerWorks was mysteriously bought out and shut down but no one knew by who. The FingerWorks forum was lit up with all sorts of speculation about who had bought them out; IBM, Microsoft and Wacom were thrown out as well as Apple. It was later confirmed that Elias and Westerman had been brought on at Apple but due to strict NDA’s everything was hush-hush until now! Apple didn’t invent this technology and it sucks they don’t give out the credit to those who did come up with it in the first place. But with Apple’s backing, who knows how far Elias and Westerman have taken the technology. So what does this mean for the future of Apple’s ‘Multi-Touch’ technology? The highly rumored Mac tablet is inevitable. The facts and the technology are there, hell it’s been there a lot longer than we thought. The iPhone was released before anything else utilizing the ‘Multi-Touch’ technology because they knew they could kick everyone’s butt in the smartphone industry in one fell swoop. With FingerWorks patents in hand and years of advancement in their back pocket Apple can take as long as they want to release the tablet or anything revolutionary on their own time.
And now you know… the rest of the story.
Michael Doan (Who am I?)
1 year ago
There really isn’t any type of confirmation that Apple bought FingerWorks. It seems more likely that they bought or was granted an exclusive license to use Jeff Han’s Multi-Touch system. Funny how the names are the same!
patent-monkey (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Finger Works and the inventor’s clearly have the makings for a superior solution to the Optimus. A list of their patents shows quite a nice platform for Apple to reinvent the keyboard and mouse.
webonics (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I like Apple and think they’ve made some great uses of technology. But it is funny to hear how often Steve Jobs takes credit for developing the technology despite the technologies’ development by others. Al Gore should be on alert as Steve may one day claim, “I invented the internet.” :-)
webonics (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Good post too. Very informative.
patent-monkey (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Gotta watch this…
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han
Peter Ha
1 year ago
Great vid Patent-Monkey, a lot more clear than the one I found earlier.
Michael- Jeff Han released his technology last year. FingerWorks was bought out in early 2005, the technology was around long before that. While the technologies are similar, it would be much easier for Apple to transfer FingerWorks technology to its own products. But what do I know…
Reply
Pete (Who am I?)
1 year ago
The brand new red Porsche Carrera 4 I saw parked behind Evans hall (University of Delaware) 1.5 years ago leads me to believe that it was Fingerworks that was bought out. That….and the rumors I’ve heard circulating around the EE department.
nomaded (Who am I?)
1 year ago
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0612sec10q.html
Apple 10-Q: thirteen new lawsuits, nine settled
[...]
Quantum Technology Management, Ltd. v. Apple Computer, Inc. - File December 21, 2005, word of this lawsuit only emerged in the most recent 10-Q filing after Apple acquired Fingerworks, Ltd., the original company the lawsuit was filed against. Quantum is alleging infringement of U.S. Patent number 5,730,165 entitled “Time Domain Capacitive Field Detector.” The complaint seeks unspecified damages and other relief. On May 11, 2006, Quantum filed an amended complaint adding Cypress Semiconductor/MicroSystems, Inc. as a defendant. Apple answered the complaint on July 31, 2006 denying all material allegations and also filed counterclaims for non-infringement and invalidity. Quantum replied on November 30, 2006 to Apple’s counterclaims and filed a More Definite Statement.
ivanw (Who am I?)
1 year ago
How childish is this claim!
How FingerWorks users could keep silent when they use MultiTouch technology everyday for a few years now?
Hey Steve, you can’t hide anything in the web ;-)
But I’m sure you know that… This is why I’m so amazed about how we can get used to big lies like this one… Still, this takes big balls!
Have a look there:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=819650
http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickonline_archive_10_2002.asp?pageid=666&co_pageid=3
http://stream.servstream.com/ViewWeb/BBCWorld/File/worl_Click070302_two_cable.asx?Media=5644
Petar Smilajkov (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I’ll wait for Apple iPhone v2.0… I know there will be one, and probably within a year from the launch of this one …
No 3G, no SD card slot, no full Wide-Screen video support, etc. make me just wanna wait a little longer. It’s beautiful, but I’ll pass this time …
Petar
http://www.VistaJuice.com
Rob (Who am I?)
1 year ago
With Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone announcement, we enter an era when all the other smartphone providers need to now sit up and define their own clear positioning and path forward…
http://www.wikistock.com/wiki/Apple_Inc._%28AAPL%29