http://nexus404.com/Blog/2010/04/29/new ... ore-print/
Note in particular the two finger point/click gesture -- what the news stories don't point out is that that one is not just some add-on gesture that fills the same role as a dusty old keyboard shortcut. It's a change to the standard apple gestures used on iPhone etc. (which is single-finger touch, not two-finger touch, right?). Using two fingers instead of one for pointing and clicking makes typing and pointing work well together on an integrated input device, because you don't have to have an ugly time / distance threshold for distinguishing pointer movement from typing, since asynchronous single finger contacts are essentially always typing.
You could interpret this in several ways:
- This was just a quick and dirty patent application and they left that one in by mistake
- They patented these old gestures just because they patent everything soon as look at it as part of their legal defences
- Maybe now they have the iphone, ipod touch, ipad, magic mouse, magic trackpad and magic touch nosehair remover, they'll let Wayne get back to why he did this in the first place and make another keyboard