Type of Article: MacTech Blog

By Greg Mills

The press is reporting a monstrous patent case in Federal Court in the state of Texas that went against Apple for the “Cover Flow” way of rolling images across the display, as seem in the album art display in iTunes and elsewhere in the Mac OS.  

While the judgement likely means at the end of it all, Apple may well have to pay some amount of money, the current US$600,000,000 judgement will not likely stand. Frankly, so many patents on computer graphical interfaces have been written it staggers the mind to thing much could really be novel anymore.  

An Apple patent (number 7,808,479) for an ambidextrous mouse has appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. The ambidextrous mouse is configured for both left and right handed use.

The mouse may include right handed buttons on the front side of the mouse and left handed buttons on the back side of the mouse. The user may change the handedness of the mouse by rotating the mouse about a vertical axis of the mouse such that the left hand can use the left hand buttons and the right hand can use the right hand buttons.

Apple has won patents from the US Patent & Trademark Office for Time Machine, Cover Flow and the Mighty Mouse.

By Greg Mills

Microsoft is at it again, breathlessly planning to underwhelm us with “me too” tooo late to be relevant software. They are planning to spend millions advertising their new smartphone software.