Apple awarded touch sensitive bezel patent

Does the iPad’s extra wide bezel bother you? I know it bothers me. It’s consistent with other displays that Apple produces, such as on the MacBook Pros, but I still hate to see that much wasted space. Apparently Apple has similar feelings, but instead of eliminating this space between the edge of the device and the screen, they may intend to put it to use. Apple has been awarded a patent to use that area for touch based controls. What a great idea.

Instead of touching the screen and flicking up to scroll down a webpage, you could perform the same action to the side of your screen on the bezel area. In a game, you could touch the bottom right corner to control accelleration, or jump, or whatever. The point is that you don’t have too cover the screen with your fingers to control the iDevice for some common controls.

Apple’s use of mutli-touch in all iDevices is probably close to the top on their feature lists, but it doesn’t make sense for all controls, like those in games. And while a controller is still better, this is a great step forward. I’m strongly doubting this technology makes it into the rev A iPad, but that would be an excellent “One more thing” wouldn’t it? So would an iSight, but I’m not holding my breath.

Read [Patently Apple]