New Apple Patent Points to Scrollable Menus and Toolbars in iOS, Mac OS X

A new Apple patent was just revealed that suggests iOS (and the upcoming Mac OS X Lion) could have scrolling menus and toolbars The idea would be that users could bring up menus and toolbars that apply to whatever application they're in, scroll through them, and select a command from the toolbar itself.

The patent also tells us that these toolbars could consist of text only commands or that icons could be used. To put it in simpler terms, it could change the way you interact with your OS. Right now in Mac OS X we use drop-down menus to save a file, open a document, or edit them. In iOS we use typically use pop-up menus. This patent implies that Apple may be looking at changing it up a bit. I'm not quite sure how I feel about scrolling through menus on a Mac or if I prefer the traditional solution (drop-down menus are easy to access), but I could definitely see this being an extremely useful feature in iOS. What do you guys think?

[(http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2010/11/a-new-patent-reveals-scrollable-menus-toolbars-for-os-x-lion.html)]

Allyson Kazmucha

iMore senior editor from 2011 to 2015.