The abstract is more narrow than that. It includes a limitation where one number of fingers causes one type of display modification, and a different number of fingers causes a different screen modification. A device that has only ONE n-finger gesture seems to not infringe.
I have a number of laptops with touch PAD technology (Synaptics) that recognizes/differentiates one, two and three fingertip events.
Yes, and I wonder if those touch pads where made transparent and placed over a screen, would that be considered a violation of the Apple patent? I also wonder what finger motions where enabled using data gloves. That’s also an older technology.