Apple re-invents the cursor (again)

October 2nd, 2008 by Mitch Brisebois

Apple filed a new US patent application describing a “smart cursor” that is able to detect certain states on a mouse-over and change its appearance accordingly (or display text). Apple first did this in Hypercard when its pointer changed to a hand when the user moused-over a hyperlink.

According to Apple,

when a cursor is positioned over an icon or link associated with a target, the appearance of the cursor changes to present information describing or related to the target. Such information can include, for example, an excerpt of the contents of the target, and/or meta-data for the target, and/or an indication of what application or applications may be used to open the target.