iPhone's Pinch-to-Zoom Feature May be Replaced by Sensor

[zakislam]

Auto-zoom feature would be based on facial proximity.

iPhone's Pinch-to-Zoom Feature May be Replaced by Sensor : Read more

 

[alidan]

wow... sounds like a massive mistake if there is no way to turn it off.

 

[dishayu]

Good bye, battery life.

 

[ikyung]

They will release it, then 99% of iPad users will disable it then it will be forgotten until another company improves upon the feature and gets sued by Apple.

 

[vaughn2k]

"the technology could use facial recognition software to establish a more accurate distance..."
They'd be sued by Micosoft when using this technology... What els Apple?

 

[idono]

How can this even be patented. They are just retrofitting a face recognition system.

 

[jldevoy]

How well would this function with people over 40 who start to struggle to read things close up?

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]jldevoy[/nom]How well would this function with people over 40 who start to struggle to read things close up?[/citation]

im thinking its something like this. it measures eye distance, and through averages, makes it so the zoom is what most people would find comfortable at that distance, and instead of getting bigger the close you get, the more of the page is shown.

i honestly dont thing that either zoom for closer or zoom for further away are good methods, think this will fail before it even takes off, and will be a cool tech demo more than anything else.

 

[L0tus]

Imagine the level of toolness one would achieve thrusting their phones back and forth from their face XD

 

[aicom]

This just shows how far Apple has fallen, and how far they have left to fall. Jobs' Apple made products, not gimmicks.

 

[Guest]

Very bad idea. Just because someone gets closer to the device, does not necessarily means that they want to perform zoom in or out of the content. Looks like Apple does lose its creativity with bad ideas running amok in the company pretending to be new innovative ideas.

A much better idea is to detect the movement of the fingers without requiring the finger to touching the surface, which will avoid the oily finger print issue. Of course, to make it viable instead of accidentally detecting unintentional movement, there should be a small distance the fingers need to be from the surface, and there should be onscreen feedback to indicate what gesture is being detected. This approach, is already partially done in Samsung Galaxy Note 2, except currently it still requires the use of a stylus.

 

[pacomac]

I really fails to believe Apple is stupid enough to patent a system like this. Someone writing this article has made a big leap of faith attaching such a system to pinch and zoom. It could be used to ensure the image on display is always retina for the viewing distance but it can't replace pinch and zoom!

 

[unimatrixzero]

Forget about looking at your iPad or iPhone while you walk or shifting positions while sitting. You'll end up getting dizzy with the screen zooming and un-zooming.

 

[abbadon_34]

I'm sure they'll convince every its "Better" and the "best" amoth NOOBS ,and non-techs

 

[darkavenger123]

The whole idea is to patent anything now or future that even remotely resembles it. Soon they'll sue Microsoft for Kinect because Apple "invent" it first (as usual). Sueing is where Apple makes the biggest profits!!

 

[zybch]

Ug, what a dreadful idea. This is why they need someone like Jobs (whos main contribution was to say "no" to many many stupid things).

 

[wemakeourfuture]

[citation][nom]idono[/nom]How can this even be patented. They are just retrofitting a face recognition system.[/citation]

Face recognition system just detects faces. That alone does NOT cover every single type of application for face recognition. This patent provides a very particular action when analysing the face. It zooms in when detecting the face in certain context. A typical race recognition system does not do this at all, its just hardware and software that has detected a face and does not apply any action to it.

 

[wemakeourfuture]

[citation][nom]darkavenger123[/nom]The whole idea is to patent anything now or future that even remotely resembles it. Soon they'll sue Microsoft for Kinect because Apple "invent" it first (as usual). Sueing is where Apple makes the biggest profits!![/citation]

Very little of their revenue and profit comes from litigation...

 

[blakbird24]

Well that's a dumb idea. This one falls under the "grasping at straws" category. Is it really possible for a company to fall apart this fast because of the loss of one man?

Kinda looks that way. Sad.

 

[Guest]

At first I was going to throw more gas on this fire of hate but I got to thinking; the ideas isn't as bad as it sounds. If you think about it this conforms naturally to how people read. If they want to zoom in they get closer to the screen; zoom out they pull back. I can't think of any operation on a mobile phone that would break that convention. I do think the problem here would be how practical it would be to switch from "Comfort" mode to "zoom" mode, and that is where I think they should not bother; zoom mode should be pinch zoom and comfort mode should be face zoom. But on the face of it; no pun intended; it sounds like an interesting ideas. At least to test out.