Pen based computing has largely been a niche market, but it looks like Apple plans to bring pen based computing to the mainstream, like it brought mp3 player with iPod and touchscreen with iPhone. In a patent application filed by Apple titled “Method and Apparatus for Acquiring and Organizing Ink Information in Pen-aware Computer Systems”, the company talks about methods that can be used to improve accuracy of pen-based inputs. Apple says that the pen-based input methods used today are inadequate for many users.

“Even Systems that attempt to improve this situation by using each stroke to determine the input field anew, such as the Apple Newton from Apple Computer Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., can suffer from failure modes that make the situation difficult for both end users and for the application developers,” Apple wrote in the patent application. “For example, a word that accidentally spans two input fields even a tiny amount (due, for instance, to a stray ascender, descender, crossbar, or dot) may be broken up into multiple sessions, casing misrecognition and invalid data entries that must be manually corrected.”

Apple says that to solve such problems an intermediary is needed in between the pen and the application on the hardware. Apple has developed “ink manager” to act as an intermediary between the pen and the hardware.

“The ink manager interfaces between a pen based input device, one or more applications (pen-aware or not) and one or more handwriting recognition engines executing on the computer system,” Apple states. “The ink manager acquires ink information, such as ink strokes, entered at the pen-based input device, and organizes that information into ink phrases.”

According to Apple, this approach will reduce error and make pen-based computing more accurate. It is rumored that Apple will introduce a tablet like device in first quarter of 2010 and this technology can definitely make Apple tablet more useful.
[Via AppleInsider]