Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

In the past when rumors have started circulating regarding upcoming Apple keynotes, or uncovered patent applications, I’ve made a point of taking a stab at what it all means.

This time I’m taking a stab at the latest Apple patents. The ones that talk of a display that includes integrated photo sensor lenses, and a tablet-style computer that recognizes fingertip gestures, such as grabbing and moving objects about the screen and operating a virtual scroll wheel.

Here’s my prediction: The screen that’s a camera is not some kind of scanner. It is not an eyesight camera; the resolution will be far too low for that. The screen that’s also a camera will be focused one inch above the screen itself. It will see fuzzy blobs out to four inches or so, resolving into actual fingers and fingertips as you move your hand into that one inch sweet spot. It won’t read your fingerprints, or know if your hands are dirty; that doesn’t matter. It just needs to be good enough to guess that those are fingers coming into focus, and those fingers are expecting responses.

So you’ll cradle the Mac Tablet in one hand and manipulate the interface with the other, without ever touching the screen itself — it won’t have a pressure sensitive screen as in a Pocket PC (requiring actual physical contact, causing smudging, and not technically viable at the size required for a true tablet), and it won’t have a Wacom-style screen that would require a special pen and only one point of interface at a time.

With the screen that’s a camera you could use one finger in focus to point, click and drag; two fingers in focus to scroll, zoom and manipulate; and all ten fingures to type — yes, actually viably type.

No scratches. No smudges. No buttons — just pure intuition.

That’s the killer app in all this.