Item — HN Reader

The Notion Ink tablet originally had this back in 2010. It was disabled and eventually removed entirely. There were rumors that it was squashed by an apple patient, but I cannot find anything more substantial.

The whole NI tablet debacle made me quite jaded towards miracle tech. I'm lucky it predated kickstarter, because I would have most likely backed it up to 50% over retail. It's probably why I don't own a 1st gen pebble.

Here is a good overview of the concept's rise and fall: http://www.engadget.com/tag/NotionInk/

1 comments

it is one of those things that seem perfect on paper. and may even be good for the power user. but everyone knows that power user and consumer hardware are not a good match.

you are right about the apple patent. Apple bought fingerWorks in 2005 and killed ALL the loved product lines (of note, one keyboard that was in its entire area, a touchpad). apple sit on top of the company's IP assets and used it for nothing but suing people. ...and people still wonder why i avoid any apple product..

anyway, eventually the touch screen tech made it to the iphones. or so they say. but if you compare the fingerworks tech on the few shipped keyboards and the iphone resistive touchscreen, they have little in common. apple was just trolling everyone with the patents and killing innovation all around.

but since fingerworks was dead since 2005 thanks to apple, several other companies with employees that probably never even heard of finger works developed this idea... nokia as you mention. sony with psp. motorola with the backflip (which being one of the first AT&T exclusive android phones suffered of having the worst crap of custom android ROM that ever saw the light of day). And more recently the Oppo N1 already have the very same implementation idea mentioned in the article, and is in production. but you don't see anyone rushing to the stores.