The appearance of an interesting touchscreen patent lends some weight to the previous iPod Video mockups, and no doubt has Apple fanboys drooling at the thought of an Apple tablet PC.
The patent application describes a method of using a touchscreen to basically simulate the iPod scroll wheel (or “volume knobs, switches, sliders, handles, knobs, doors, and other widgets that may be created to facilitate human interaction with the computing system”). I think the only ‘new’ idea in the patent is the fact that an image of the scroll wheel would appear after the device interprets a gesture as invoking it (e.g. a circular motion).
Despite searching, I couldn’t see anywhere in the patent a description of a device or method for keeping human skin grease from partially obscuring the display of video on a electronic device…
