It's not as if justice is at stake.
The person responsible for the Kyle Rittenhouse murder case has questions and would like to hear from an expert witness about the pinch-to zoom feature on iPads. Judge Bruce Schroeder denied Thomas Binger, Kenosha County's prosecutor, permission to present evidence on an iPad with the built-in zoom function. Why? Judge Schroeder failed to explain, but maybe pinching or zooming, which can alter the image, is possible.
The judge observed, "What the defense is saying, I think, and he knows less than anyone else in the room,I'm certain, about all this stuff but I'm hearing him say that they are actually artificially inserting pixel into there, which is altering what is being portrayed."
As anyone who has used a smartphone in recent years knows, pinch-to zoom is not how it works. We reached out to Apple to get its views on the technical problem in order to explain it to the judge.
We did not receive an immediate response. This is too bad as Judge Schroeder wanted to hear from someone.
He said to the prosecutor "You are the proponent" and he needed to assure him before I let the jury speculate that "pinch-to zoom" is a reliable technique that doesn't distort the image.
Rittenhouse's dumbfounding technical ignorance was triggered by Mark Richards, Rittenhouse's defense lawyer, who also admitted that he didn’t know what Rittenhouse was talking about. The jaw-dropping exchange can be seen in the video below, which was uploaded by the Washington Post. It starts at the 5:02 and 2 minutes and 26 seconds mark.
He explained to the judge that Apple's iPads have artificial intelligence, which allows things to be viewed through logarithms and three dimensions.
This was again in support of Richards' attempt to stop pinch-to-zoom.
Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he was arrested in 2020 for first-degree murder. Rittenhouse, then 17, was charged with first-degree murder in 2020. He was following militia groups on Facebook who were opposed to Black Lives Matter protests.
