Looks like Apple has filed a patent for a “Dynamically Controlled Keyboard“. This is particularly interesting to me because in the summer of 2004 two friends (James and Felix) and I filed for a provisional patent based on the exact same idea. I emailed James tonight to get the exact dates and reference number for the provisional patent in order to verify what I’m writing now, but I couldn’t wait for him to reply before writing this post. I’ll write a follow up once I get his reply.
Anyway, the story goes…We were on our second pitcher at the UCI pub (back then I was living in Newport Beach, CA) talking about interface design when the idea struck to create a keyboard that would provide visual cues based on functionality available to an application at any given moment. Thoughts of the old plastic templates people use to lay over their keyboards for programs like Wordperfect came to mind along with visions of the Korean professional Starcraft gamers I watched on tv when I was in Seoul. James and Felix dug the idea, both had experience filing patents, so we went for it.
To make a long story short, we didn’t follow through for a couple of reasons. We were all very busy at the time, starting a business manufacturing/marketing keyboards and related software (first application was probably going to be a “How to type” game for kids) wasn’t optimal, and, honestly, I lagged a little and caused us to lose motivation. It’s kind of a shame we didn’t see it through. I can imagine James’ reply to my email with a big “I told you so” in it.
The biggest tragedy isn’t that Apple filed the patent, it’s that I still haven’t had the chance to work on something cool with James and Felix. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Apple comes up with for this keyboard of theirs. Maybe one day we’ll really have dynamically controlled, context aware computer interfaces and I won’t have to keep showing my mom how to use shortcut keys.
Sphere: Related Content