Apple has since long been one of the pioneers when it comes to user interfaces on the MP3 player market. Their widely known “click-wheel”-system found on several MP3 players today is more or less associated with Apple’s Ipod series. The next generation of portable media players does however demand a new way of receiving input and navigating within the player itself, at least if we’re to believe Apple in their latest patent application. The patent is about a new display technique focusing on a new user interface, featuring a touch screen to be able to use as much of the surface of the MP3-player as possible. Even though this sounds pretty good it isn’t without flaws, such as problems navigating if one’s got big and/or clumsy fingers. The fact that one also might wear out the display is also without doubt a problem.
Apple’s solution to this problem seems to be dividing the screen into two pieces. One smaller LCD screen attached to the front of the player, showing all the information. And a larger touch screen on the back-side for managing the navigation within the player. In short, any moves you do on the back-side with your fingers will be synchronized and shown on the front side of the player.
“Also displayed is a cursor which shows the position of the user’s finger against the back-side touch-surface relative to click-wheel,” Apple explained. “In the illustrated embodiment, the navigation menu and click-wheel are rendered transparently (denoted by dashed lines) so that the user may continue to view whatever information was being displayed at the time they activated the back-side control.”
At AppleInsider you can find a longer article about Apples new “Back-Side Interface for Hand-Held Devices” which looks very promising indeed.
