Thursday, October 10, 2024
Archived Post

Future Apple Watches could offer more physical movement interactions

You can already interact with your Apple Watch by physical movements; namely, raising your wrist to “wake it up.” A new patent filing (number 20190018506) shows that Apple is looking at ways to take this to the next level.

It involves the smartwatch performing an operation in response to a positioning of a user’s hand and/or an orientation of the electronic device. In the patent filing, Apple notes that devices configured to be worn by a user can allow a user to view and respond to various types of alerts, such as text messages, emails, voicemails, and calendar alerts. The tech giant says that user interfaces that enable a reduced-size electronic device to be efficiently used for viewing and responding to alerts are desirable. 



Apple’s idea is for the Apple Watch to be able to perform actions pre-set by the user based on how the user tilts her wrist, rotates her arm, etc. One example: you might answer an incoming call on a cellular-enabled Apple Watch by raising your wrist and tilting it slightly.

Of course, Apple files for — and is granted — lots of patents by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Many are for inventions that never see the light of day. However, you never can tell which ones will materialize in a real product.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.