Apple Patented Its Own ‘Air Command’ for iOS

The moving radial menu is known as Samsung technology. But is it? Recently, Apple was awarded a patent for adding the feature to its Macs and iOS devices.

Though the feature may not be implemented in any upcoming product lineup, a radial menu does give Apple an alternative option to the pull-down menu. A radial menu would allow the user to create “context-specific menus and submenus” at optimal positions close to the mouse cursor or, for an iOS device, a finger.

Samsung’s radial menu, Air Command, was implemented after the introduction of the Galaxy Note smartphone. This month, the company is debuting its Galaxy Note 4 with an updated radial menu at Unpacked in Berlin. To be fair, the technology in Apple’s patent is, indeed, very similar to Air Command. Followers of both tech giants will butt heads over who copied whom. It would be easy to say that Apple “copied” Samsung’s Air Command idea. This claim, however, is incorrect.

Apple apparently filed the patent in June 2008, long before Samsung brought about the Note. The idea simply has not been put to use in any of Apple’s product lineup so far. Whether we will see it in the newest operating systems, iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, is uncertain. It probably isn’t very likely, but it would be a nice surprise.

The question now is: will there be yet another Apple v. Samsung lawsuit?