Apple looking to patent iPhone-friendly glove?
updated 10:30 am EST, Fri January 2, 2009
iPhone-ready glove patent
Apple may be exploring the idea of gloves more friendly to touchscreens, an application published by the US Patent and Trademark Office reveals. A problem common to iPhone and iPod users in colder areas, such as Canada and the northern US, is that they must wear gloves when going outside. Because Apple handhelds use capacitive touchscreens however, it may be difficult or impossible for the electrical signals from a person's fingers to pass through glove fabric.
Apple's proposed glove design would include inner and outer layers, the former covering the palm and at least one finger. The inner layer would also emulate properties of human skin, namely its electrical resistance. To control a touchscreen, holes in the outer layer would allow one or several fingers to protrude; to keep hands as warm as possible, the holes would be lined with elastic rings and/or some sort of cap, for when fingers are safely tucked back inside.
hmm
01/02, 10:55am reply
All I think they need to do is put negative grounds in the fingertips. For example, take a AA battery, the negative side (flat) and you can control the iPhone.
chelsel
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2007
Or..
01/02, 11:14am reply
You could go to any outdoor store and buy gloves/mitts that allow the portion covering the fingers to flip away, for what would probably be a fraction of the price.
Personally, I'm so busy tanning hides up here in the Great White North that I don't have time to use my ipod anyway.
Chris Hutcheson
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Oct 2000
Man, you just knew it
01/02, 12:43pm reply
is that they must wear gloves when going outside.
The liberals get into power, and now their forcing their left-wing agendas onto the entire North American continent.
In the good old Reagan years, the gov't would never have mandated they you MUST wear gloves when going outside. But now we've got Obama HUSSEIN Obama and his big-gov't buddies and all they want to do is legislate, legislate, legislate.
Ha! I remember the good ol' days, when people had the right to go outside in the frigid cold without gloves. But apparently not anymore!
testudo
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Aug 2001
They already exist
01/02, 02:11pm reply
Gloves for iPhones already exist. Saw these on the Command N podcast (#160, December 5, 2008):
http://www.dotsgloves.com/
Koda
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2003
They already exist
01/02, 02:11pm reply
Gloves for iPhones already exist. Saw these on the Command N podcast (#160, December 5, 2008):
http://www.dotsgloves.com/
Koda
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2003
dude
01/03, 07:11am reply
"they must wear gloves"
even your attempts at humor are ridiculously lame and reek of bad form. not surprising though.
nat
Junior Member
Joined: Mar 2002
Dammit!
01/04, 11:44pm reply
I thought of this in 2006 and even made a glove to work with my iPod... but didn't have the money to try and patent it!!!
WHY!?!?!?
Sean.Perrin
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Sep 2008