Apple Inc. (AAPL): Collegians May Have Solution to Fat Fingers

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) hasn’t come out with an iWatch yet, and there is no word yet whether smartphones will get smaller themselves, or if there will soon be an iThimble, but at least a couple of techies at Carnegie Mellon University in Ohio have come up with a new feature that basically presumes the genesis of smaller and smaller keyboards – especially the virtual ones on touchscreens that are presuming to get smaller and smaller (the Samsung Galaxy S4 notwithstanding).

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) fanboys who tend to suffer from Fat Finger Syndrome on virtual keyboards may have just found their savior when it comes to minimizing errors in text messages or e-mails. Some researchers at Carnegie Mellon – a group headed by a Ph.D. and a doctoral candidate wh0 have reportedly created what is called a ZoomBoard, which “zooms” a small keyboard to enable users to type more accurately – if slowly – by utilizing vicinity touch technology.

Image: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

A Leading Company Cheaper Than 90% Of Blue Chips... And It Recently Bounced 12%The way this supposedly works is when a user is ready to type, he can press the small virtual keyboard in a general area of the key he wants to push, and that area of the keyboard will zoom larger to make the key look larger and thus be more easily pushed.

Capital letters can be made by holding down the key, and symbols and spaces can be found by swiping across the screen while the ZoomBoard is enabled. The creators say that an Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) user could type about 10 words per minutes, but that would be virtually error-free, compared to some of the fat-fingered errors that seem to be common on virtual keyboards today that are already smaller than traditional computer keyboards. So just imagine what this might mean for an iWatch that supposedly would behave similar to a smartphone! Without ZoomBoard, it’s possible that even your 4-year-old would have fingers too fat to type well on an iWatch.

What do you think about this technology? Might this help advance an Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iWatch or some other micro-technology? Do you have a virtual keyboard currently with which you are having difficulty? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.

As a bonus, check out some of the best fan-made iWatch designs [VIDEOS]:

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