The patent for this technology dates back as far as 2005, the early stages of Apple’s development of the iPad. The patent application discusses a number of different implementations of the virtual wheel and virtual knob, all of which look like the iPod’s click wheel. One implementation includes volume controls, similar to the volume controls on the iPod’s click wheel.

The patent also shows a number of other UI implementations, including multi-touch gestures such as two-finger zoom. But Apple hasn’t really advanced and implemented the idea.

Independent tech journalist Sonny Dickson posted a video in 2017 showing an early Apple prototype for the iPhone that largely followed the iPod’s operating model.

The video showed that the iPhone would use an iPod-like mode of operation, with a virtual scroll wheel on the bottom half of the screen. The prototype, called Acorn, has a menu assigned to the top half, just like the early iPod, and a black menu bar in the middle, with four buttons for fast forward, fast rewind, menu, and play/pause.

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After selling the company he founded to Google, Fadell has now joined the board of directors of semiconductor company Arm.

Tony Fadell officially joined Arm’s board of directors on Thursday to help the company improve its processor designs as Arm expands its technology into more areas than just smartphones, CNET reports.

In fact, Tony Fadell’s history at Arm goes back long before this new role, as he previously pushed hard for the use of Arm chips in the iPod and iPhone. Later, Apple found the Arm architecture to be really good, so it is now used in processors like the latest M1 and M2.

The primary reason Fadell prefers Arm over other designs is that it is more focused on low power consumption. He believes that performance should not come at the cost of poor endurance. Now that the main constraint for PCs and servers is also power consumption, Fadel said, Arm’s focus on low power becomes even more important.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the executive said he hopes to “bring more of a systems-level mindset” to Arm when considering “the end consumer.

Arm CEO Rene Haas invited Fadell to work with Arm, which introduced Fadell as a new member of the board at the 2022 Networking Summit in Lisbon, which also featured two Apple executives as speakers.

It’s unclear what Tony Fadell will do at Arm, but it’s believed he will be the link between Apple and Arm, and in 2020, Apple announced that the Mac will gradually transition from Intel processors to its own Apple Silicon, and Apple is expected to release a series of M2-derived chips in the first quarter of next year based on The MacBook Pro and Mac Pro/ mini are expected to be released in the first quarter of next year.

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