How does an apple know when you are touching it?

[Lukeee]

So lately a lot of apple products have been invading my house and one thing I noticed is they know when you are touching them but I don't get how.

I'm talking about screens and stuff (iphone, mouse...) not about keyboards or chargers. They respond really well to fingers and other body parts but they don't respond to non human things like the cap of a pen or the handle of a knife even though they are exactly the same shape/size as a finger or the tip of a nose.

It isn't a problem. I just want to know how they do it.


Does anyone know for sure how it works?

 

[Corny]

if you lick the pen cap before using it, it will work for some time

 

[cinnamontea]

it's all about electrical conductivity

 

[Lukeee]

I thought people would think I was a bit crazy when they read this

Thanks for the responses. Very interesting.

 

[Corny]

^ licking the tip of the glove works here as well

 

[trinket]

^ licking the tip of the glove works here as well

Licking pen tips, licking glove tips...Corny, is there a tip anywhere of anything that you won't lick?

 

[Corny]

you don NOT need to lick that tip

 

[JB3]

I've seen winter gloves that are supposed to be specially designed to let you operate your ipod/phone/pad while wearing them, but I never tried it out myself.

when I know I'm going out into the cold, I'll just load up a playlist or an album that I know I won't want to shuffle through (unlike my usual default, which is just playing all of the songs on my ipod on random)

We sold them at the store where I work part time and they suck. They had little conductive metal nibs at on the thumb and index finger and that was it. They worked like shit.

The better option is to get conductive thread from a sewing store (yes, such a thing exists) and sew it into an existing pair of gloves.