From DailyTech: One of the key control elements of Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) smartwatch is its Force Touch technology. The technology has also made its way into the new 12 inch Macbook and the refreshed MacBook Pro models. Now another report offers a more detailed description of how sources say iOS 9 will make use of Force Touch, in preparation for the ninth generation iPhone's arrival later this year.
In the modern era capacitive multitouch smartphones have become ubiquitous. Apple holds the distinction of being the first company to successfully commercialize this form of multitouch in the smartphone. Now, it's worth noting that other companies had previously commercialized resitive multitouch, but at lower sales volumes. And capacitive multitouch's fundamental principles had been laid out mostly in the 1980s in university publications. However, Apple was the first to commercialize to seize upon the more promising capacitive flavor of touch multi-finger touch technology.
In terms of intellectual property, most of Apple's multitouch "innovation" actually came second hand via an acquisition. In 2005 Apple's late CEO Steve Jobs cleverly scooped up FingerWorks, a prescient pioneer of multi-touch heuristics. Founded by University of Delaware Professors John Elias and Wayne Westerman the time FingerWorks was using its capacitive multi-touch to produce touch keyboards commercial for PCs. Jobs saw that the technology held more promise in the mobile device space, where lack of tactile input (e.g. keyboards and mice) and space constraints were driving the adoption of novel control technologies.
Once Apple showed the potential of the technology in the mobile space -- something only a few resistive touch pioneers such as Neonode saw -- Apple's rivals moved swiftly to adopt the technology, finding ways to avoid the minefield of Apple's heuristic patents (most of which came courtesy of the FingerWorks acquisition). Ultimately, while Apple controlled the firmware, it never directly produced the touchscreen. In fact, it relied on rivals like LG Electronics Inc. (KRX:066570)(KRX:066575) and Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd.'s (KRX:005930) (KRX:005935) to mass produce the multitouch screen hardware that went into its devices.
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