A duo of Apple patent applications published Thursday show how Apple could venture into the Adobe Photoshop space with an app for virtual drawing. Another interesting invention -- which may or may not ever see the light of day -- is an application for an illuminated MacBook trackpad.
One of the problems with robust drawing applications, particularly on touchscreen devices, is that fine-tuning your work requires burying yourself in menu and after menu, looking away from your work to adjust whatever virtual tool you're using. But Apple has a possible solution through U.S. Patent Application No 20120210261. The patent application deals with graphical object input (things like brush strokes, a string of text, or a geometric shape) and the accompanying U.S. Patent Application No 20120206471, which covers the manipulation of such objects.
The former of those two applications describes a new way of accessing and manipulating input items from a menu using a mouse or touchscreen. "Rather than having to select options on a displayed menu," the description states, "a user may provide input gestures at or near a displayed input tool to directly manipulate one or more properties of that input tool, such as its size or color." The app would then visually change the way that tool looks onscreen to indicate any adjustments you've made to its properties. An "input gesture" would be a multitouch gesture, like those already in iOS and OS X. For example, you could use pinch-to-zoom to minimize or enlarge the size of the tool you're using.
According to the patent application, these capabilities would provide "a more efficient and intuitive user interface for generating graphical objects." It would also allow the user to focus more exclusively on the task at hand without having to move their attention to a side menu to make minor adjustments.
The second of the virtual-drawing patents handles object layering, making it "less confusing and less overwhelming to a casual user" and providing the "simplicity of a basic drawing space application." In one very basic scenario, the app could create a new layer for each object created onscreen and automatically stack that layer on top of past layers.
Apple also detailed a way you could get immediate feedback while using a touchpad in U.S. Patent Application No 20120206392, a continuation of a previous patent titled "Touch Pad with Feedback.” A portion of the touchpad's surface would light up based on user touch input. And it wouldn't just act as backlighting, but could also provide feedback and even change color or intensity based on how you're using the touchpad.
This could be useful for training purposes. For instance, it might help teach a new OS X user how to use Apple's MultiTouch gestures. The touchpad could prompt the user, with certain lighting, into performing specific touch gestures based on how they are currently using the computer and what action they want. And stretching the capabilities further, the technology could even turn the touchpad itself into an interface. You could, for example, pause and play your iTunes music just by tapping on specific, lighted spots on the touchpad.
