Haptic feedback is a system that gives mobile terminals the ability to "respond" when a user interacts with them. In general, this feedback refers to the vibrations you feel when you use a gamepad and play a game that has the technology implemented, and Apple wants to introduce it in its terminals. Apple developed a linear haptic feedback system, different from the existing one for other devices, this one using a linear vibrating motor and a spring that the company attached to a linear electric motor. This new system will be used to alert users when they have new notifications and should theoretically replace the current alert system.
Mobile phones have built-in vibrators that produce mechanical vibrations, which are intended to be felt by a user of the mobile phone as an alert or feedback mechanism. The vibrator is part of what is referred to as a haptic alert device or haptic feedback device. In a linear vibrator, a spring-loaded weight is attached to a moving element of a linear electric motor. The motor drives the attached weight back-and-forth, in response to a sinusoidal input drive current. The frequency of the drive current is controlled so that it coincides with a resonant frequency of the spring, weight and motor combination. This enables the driven weight to produce strong vibrations.
The technology described above is part of an application for a patent, but it is not the only one Apple has recently filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office. The American company has also filed several patent applications for technologies that can be used in iDevice touchscreens, Mac screens or Cinema Display. Below you have links to each individual patent and the related description, but I for one would not have any illusions that Apple will produce an iMac with a touchscreen, Tim Cook stating quite clearly that this is unlikely to happen in the near future.
Today, Apple revealed a series of seven patents regarding new and varied touchscreen technologies and methodologies that could be applied to future iDevices, an iMac (desktop) and "stand-alone display" such as Apple's Cinema Display. The inventions are extremely detailed and cover a wide spectrum of technologies. For the curious, we provide you with a list of Apple's patent applications that were published by the US Patent Office today regarding these new technologies and methods:
- 20120299983 – Writing Data to Sub-Pixels using Different Write Sequences
- 20120299971 – Additional Application of Voltage during a Write Sequence
- 20120299970 – Application of Voltage to Data Lines during Vcom Toggling
- 20120299803 – Pixel-to-Pixel Coupling in Displays
- 20120299900 – Scanning Orders in Inversion Schemes of Displays
- 20120299894 – Pre-Charging of Sub-Pixels
- 20120299892 – Charging Display Artifacts across Frames