Apple patent for notebook with widescreen touchpad

Another Apple patent filing came to light yestersday--this one for a widescreen touchpad for a notebook computer. The patent was filed back on August 25, 2004, but revealed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today. If you want to wade through the dense legalese, head over to Macsimum News, which has published excerpts from the patent filing. In a nutshell, the patent app concerns a wide touchpad that appears to stretch across the width of a notebook computer and may have multiple touch-sensitive regions. However, it isn't clear from the document exactly what Apple has in mind for this touchpad.

The bulk of the text describes various methods for distinguishing a deliberate motion on the touchpad from a nondeliberate one--like resting your palms on the touchpad. One of the methods described involves an "imaging sensor" that happens to be in about the same place as the iSight on a MacBook Pro. The screenshot  to the right is the illustration that accompanies that description, with labels added. Here's what the patent application has to say about this:

"Imaging sensor 545 detects an area of base assembly 520 that includes keyboard 222 and touchpad 524. When activated, imaging sensor 545 may detect a particular hand location and establish accept/reject criteria as described above . . . In an alternative embodiment, imaging sensor 545 may also provide video-conferencing functionality when not operating as an imaging sensor."

By the way, if you'd like some background on patent filings and a roundup of other Apple patent applications, catch the February 25 episode of The Mac Observer's Weekly Roundup podcast. Here's a link to the show notes, where you can get an mp3 of that episode.
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