Type of Article: MacTech Blog

It’s a darn shame that a company that claims to be more interested in making quality products than in making money did such a miserable job on the roll-out of the Maps app in iOS 6.

The Maps app has been roundly trashed by users and customers. It’s been criticized for missing cities, botched search results and a plethora of geographic errors. Apple’s excuse: “Maps is a cloud-based solution and the more people use it, the better it will get.”

Ah yes, the Microsoft (“it’s good enough”) approach. Is this Apple’s new direction? If so, Cook and company need to seriously re-evaluate things.

Apple has won patent (number 8274492) from the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for integrated in-plane switching.

This relates to adding multi-touch functionality to a display without the need of a separate multi-touch panel or layer overlaying the display. Instead, embodiments of the invention can advantageously utilize existing display circuitry to provide multi-touch functionality while adding relatively little circuitry that is specific to the multi-touch functionality.

An Apple patent (number 8274536) for smart keyboard management for a multifunction device with a touch screen display has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

Per the patent, a method is performed at a multifunction device with a touch screen display. The method includes displaying a text entry interface with a soft keyboard in a first area and a viewing area with a first size to display scrollable information. The method detects a finger gesture on the viewing area, and responds to the gesture.

Apple has been granted a patent (number 8274479) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a gimballed scroll wheel. An input device that includes both a movement detector, such as mechanical switch, and positional indicator, such as touch pad touch screen, and/or touch sensing housing is disclosed.

These two input devices can be used substantially simultaneously to provide a command to the device. In this manner, different commands can be associated with depressing a moveable member in different areas and a single moveable member can perform like several buttons.

By Greg Mills

Whenever Apple drops its latest technological nuke on the floundering electronics sector, the usual pundits find something to whine about. For the iPhone 4 it was the antenna death grip for the iPhone 4s it didn’t have enough killer new features.  

For the iPhone 5, the improvements didn’t grab you by the lapel and shake you enough and besides, Steve Jobs wasn’t there to sell it. Never mind the iPhone 5 hadn’t even been released yet when the whining started.