Early technology patents indicated that Apple had considered equipping the iPad with a roller experience similar to iPod.

CTOnews.com December 30 news, do you remember the classic roller operation of the iPod product line? According to the "archaeological" findings of netizens in the Reddit community, the technology patents approved in 2005 implied that Apple had considered the roller operation experience of deploying iPod on the iPad, but only in the form of virtual rollers.

The patent dates back to 2005, the early stage of Apple's development of the iPad. The patent application discusses many different implementations of virtual rollers and virtual knobs, all of which look like iPod's point-and-click rollers. One implementation includes volume control, similar to the volume control of click-and-click rollers on the iPod.

The patent also shows a range of other UI implementations, including multi-touch gestures such as double-finger zooming. But Apple didn't really push and implement that idea.

CTOnews.com also learned that independent technology journalist Sonny Dickson released a video in 2017 showing that an early Apple prototype for the iPhone largely followed the iPod mode of operation.

The video shows that iPhone will use an iPod-like mode of operation, designing a virtual roller on the lower half of the screen. The top half of the prototype system, called Acorn, comes with a menu, just like the earlier iPod, and a black menu bar in the middle with four buttons: fast forward, fast rewind, menu, and play / pause.