touchscreen

Apple's winning of a key touch-screen patent this morning could give the company some of its biggest ammo yet when it comes to both fending off and going after technology rivals in the courtroom.

Apple is no stranger to legal battles, but the company is a relative newcomer to the mobile-phone business, and has extended its reach into that space with mobile devices like the iPad. Apple's success has made it an increasingly larger target, and a player that needs to defend its turf. Patents make up a huge part of that.

Now's as good a time … Read more

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a key patent for touch screen functionality on portable devices, such as the iPhone and iPad.

Apple's patent, which the company applied for in 2007, boils down to one simple focus: when a person uses their fingers to interact with the touch screen, the software reacts to that gesture. Images that Apple included with its patent application show that functionality being implemented across several different applications, including a Web browser and a home screen.

Here's the more technical description:

"A computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with … Read more

Doodle Jump is a fun and addictive platform-jumping game with a cute, hand-scribbled aesthetic and a cleverly integrated leaderboard. Not surprising for such an addictive game, the interface couldn't be more simple: you keep jumping automatically, and you gently tilt the device to move left and right. As you move higher and higher up an infinitely scrolling, wraparound vertical screen, you jump onto an increasingly challenging arrangement of platforms--including moving blue platforms, crumbling brown platforms, white platforms that disappear after one jump, and platforms with jump-boosting springs and jet packs.

You have to tap the screen to shoot the … Read more

We've gotten used to touch screens always being flat. Get ready for that to change.

Silicon Valley start-up Tactus Technology has designed a touch screen that grows 3D buttons and knobs where and when you want them.

Smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and kiosks equipped with the technology would sprout physical controls like QWERTY keyboards and knobs on demand. The controls would recede into the touch screen surface after they've served their purpose.

3D controls are often easier to maneuver than today's flat touch-screen controls, as you can use them without looking. Getting the best of both worlds means marrying physical controls' higher accuracy and ease of use with touch screens' elegance, simplicity, and dynamic nature. The physical cues are especially important for people who can't see well or who have trouble with fine hand movements. They also make it easier to control your cell phone when it's in your pocket.

The trick to making a morphing touch screen useful is fitting it in a smartphone. The Tactus design calls for sandwiching a fluid between touch-screen layers and pushing the fluid around with a series of tiny valves. The top layer is flexible, so pushing the fluid to one part of the screen raises the surface there. … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Though it won't be available in stores until at least 2012, Nintendo unveiled, and gave a name to, the hardware successor to the Wii, known at this point as Wii U.

True to many rumors and predictions, Nintendo unveiled at this year's E3 a new console with an attention-getting tabletlike controller, complete with its own 6.2-inch touch screen. This multifunctional tablet will form the centerpiece of what the Wii U will be about.

The tablet controller With a glossy … Read more

LOS ANGELES--The Wii U, Nintendo's 2012 reinvention of the Wii hardware and of home console gaming, is still a device clouded in mystery. Its controls are intriguing, its capabilities seemingly vast. We had the opportunity to play with the Wii U after Nintendo's morning press conference. To gain more perspective, we had a one-on-one conversation with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, game design legend and creative executive behind Nintendo's first-party games.

Time was limited, but I certainly had plenty of questions: about the Wii U, the future evolution of console and handheld gaming, and most importantly, how this all relates to Apple.

Q: What were the influences for the creation of Wii U? A: There was nothing external that influenced us. What really brought about the idea for it stemmed from our original concept for the Wii. We talked about it as the system that would never sleep, using something like Wii Connect 24--meaning, people would be able to access the system very quickly at any time. But, what we found was that as people started getting larger TVs, turning on the TV began to take more and more time than it used to. It was no longer instantaneous. So that became a barrier for people, and people who were watching TV would essentially make the system unavailable for somebody who wanted to play a game or see what was new with the system that day.

And so, with those challenges in mind, we started to look at what we wanted to do for the next system, and started to think that if we can't continue to always rely on the TV, we need to create a dedicated screen just for the system so people can quickly and instantly interact with it, regardless of what was happening on the TV. … Read more

Designing an operating system that will potentially make its way onto millions of next-generation tablets is a daunting task. To make things more difficult for any entrant to this space, the competition is fierce and maturing at a steady rate.

The mountain is steeper to climb for a company like Microsoft, which unveiled Windows 8 earlier this week (though it's unlikely to ship it to consumers until next year). Considering where rivals like Apple, Google, and even HP will be by then, the company has its work cut out for it.

Microsoft has one big advantage though: Windows has long been the most widely used operating system for desktop and laptop computers, and familiarity may be valuable for Microsoft when it unleashes its first operating system optimized for tablets.

Windows 7 failed to take off on tablets for two big reasons: The user interface wasn't tailored for touch screens, and x86 processors sucked up too much juice to work on the form factor. With Windows 8, Microsoft has responded by going with the same type of "Metro" tile-based interface that's been well-received on Windows Phone 7, as well as adding compatibility for ARM processors that stretch battery life.

The tile interface is attractive, and reminiscent of the Windows Phone 7 UI design, an interface not many consumers are familiar with. The company is encouraging software developers to create new interfaces for their programs that can interact with this special environment made for touch screens.

In some ways, Microsoft is betting its future in tablets on a beefy skin with extra functionality for Windows that reminds me of Windows Media Center. Sure, it's pretty, but is Microsoft taking the right approach to a tablet OS? Vote in our weekly poll, and be sure to elaborate in the comments section.… Read more

Over the past few years we've seen laptops transition from Windows XP to Windows Vista to Windows 7. Inevitable, of course, is a move to Windows 8, the new operating system officially unveiled by Microsoft this week.

Much of the Windows 8 hype so far has been about its new features for touch-screen tablets, and from the small snippets we've seen, it looks like Microsoft is finally taking that challenge seriously, as opposed to the unfulfilled tablet promises of Vista and Win7. But, Windows tablets remain a niche market, held back by both hardware and software issues (see … Read more

Is the new Nook better than the Kindle? That's what a lot of people are asking and the short answer--at least at this moment--is arguably yes.

No, it doesn't have an audio jack for MP3 music playback or a built-in basic Web browser, but it does have one thing the Kindle doesn't: a touch-screen interface--and it's a good one.

How does the new Nook perform compared with the Kindle?

Read the full review of the 2011 Nook to find out.