Recently, chatter has increased about the possibility of an ‘iPhone nano’ (a smaller lighter more-iPod-than-iPhone phone). I have no informer in a Taiwanese factory, nor saw one over someone’s shoulder at an airport neither do I have a friend who is a waiter at a restaurant who played with one. But, what I do [...]

A number of Apple patents have been released this week. Some of them deal with further refinement of touchpads (probably most of them represent versions which won’t make the light of day). One interesting example is a scroll touchpad for an iPhone that looks a lot like a present iPod. The innovation Apple suggests appears to resemble an old rotary telephone more than anything (everything old is new again!). Also, Apple seems to have got around to putting a patent application for the iChat interface - one version they show shows a three-way text chat. Another application has a description of a local area broadcast system for the iPhone (or similar product), allowing location/person specific information/applications to be sent to anyone in range. Imagine being in an Apple store/Ikea and being able to just click off on you iPhone the products you wanted and pay by credit card and then just pick them up at the counter. Mmmmh, we’ll see.

An Apple patient application suggests Apple might be extending the technology behind the iPhone’s touch sensitive screen to a new generation of mice. Users would be able to perform gestures, such as pinching or a virtual scroll wheel, as well as the normal range of left, right mouse clicks and scrolling. One embodiment of the touch-sensing mouse would use a light source within the mouse and an optically transmissive mouse top surface and internal sensors to determine the positions of the users fingers etc.