Many eyebrows are going to be raised today – especially among Samsung and its fans – from the new patent that has been granted to Apple: radial menus.
For the unfamiliar, Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has a radial menu – Air Command – that has been one of the biggest highlights of the phone and is activated by hovering the the S-Pen (the stylus) over the phone’s screen. A contextual radial menu is opened that allows for quick actions by the user.
Apple has apparently filed a patent for this back in 2012, with that patent being between about a “method of displaying radial menus” whereas is this relates to how the radial menu will function in a “moving” environment based on its location from a touchscreen, indicating possible future implementations in iOS and/or when/if OSX implements touch features in the future.
I have seen radial menus in some android apps, particularly Quick ICS Browser, being implemented many years ago, but with the Apple patents this could be used to further fuel the endless patent wars between the two giants.
Source: Gigaom
