This has irked me because those who don't know anything about touch screen technology don't seem to understand that 'taps' are actually small swipes. The sensors have a far higher resolution than your fingers ability to stay still, so the system rounds down small 'swipes' based on x time over y legnth into what the user meant as taps. It senses the touch down (start point) and the touch up (end point) which may or may not be a zero length swipe or even a small distance swipe.
At a a hardware level and strictly speaking, taps are swipes, Apple just abstracted tiny swipes away into a tap function.
It irks me that some people who don't know anything about the physics of touch screen technology and don't seem to understand that 'taps' are actually small changes of capacitance of an array of capacitors. [0]
At a a physics level, and strictly speaking, taps and swipes don't exist.
Patents are pragmatic and full of abstractions. You are not required to specify a patent at every level of abstraction all the way down to its mathematical or quantum properties.
(I have to read a number of mechanical patents each week as part of my job).
At a a hardware level and strictly speaking, taps are swipes, Apple just abstracted tiny swipes away into a tap function.