If Apple's iPad 3 Screen Is Haptic, Everything Will Change (Again)

In the wee few hours before Apple's iPad press event today, a fresh new rumor has the tech world abuzz with excitement. (Does the tech world have any other condition?) As well as stuffing a super-high-resolution screen in the iPad 3, Apple is thought to have also enabled haptic feedback on the display's surface. Since the iPad is basically a screen with electronics, this means the entire device becomes a haptic machine. That would change everything.

If you're nonplussed, haptics is the science of delivering sensations to the user of a device--you've experienced a low form of it if you've used a PlayStation controller, which gently vibrates or violently wobbles in feedback to your clumsy attempts to snowboard down the digital ski slopes of SSX for example. Some smartphones like Samsung's Anycall have employed slightly more advanced haptic systems to give your fingertip some kind of feedback when you tap at the display...but it's not exactly a widely implemented tech.

But now there's this suggestion that Apple's made good on a number of its patents and implemented haptic technology in a very advanced way on the iPad screen. They've probably done so by licensing the physical tech from another firm and melding it in a very seamless way with the rest of the iPad hardware and, most importantly, software. This would mean much more than just feeling a nondescript "jolt" when you dab at the otherwise featureless glossy face of the tablet.

If, as The Guardian is implying, Apple's gone with Senseg's ESense system, it'll mean that the screen will be able to sense ridges, cloth, sand-like surfaces, and dynamic moving textures. Senseg's sytem uses an electrostatic effect to physically attract your fingertip microscopic amounts--enough for your highly sensitive finger nerves to feel--and it's clever enough to dynamically generate a sensation that you're moving an object on the screen when you push at it with your finger.

[youtube Zq7t-ir_SHo]

Imagine Apple really does use this, or ado...

[Source: Fast Company]