Patently Apple

Apple Prepares to Rock the Market with Hardware Subsidizing Program

 

The US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple today that reveals various concepts behind a newly advanced service in development that entails subsidizing an incredible array of hardware from Apple. The hardware ranges from their sizzling hot iPhone to Apple TV - the set top box - to an actual television, notebook, iPod touch and more. The subsidization could also cover software from Apple or third party developers. What's the catch? You'll have to endure a very complicated and savvy advertising scheme that makes sure that you're paying attention. If not, the system can freeze the user out until compliance is met. This isn't for everyone, especially if ads in your face are something you want to avoid at all costs. But for the mass market, this is a whole new ballgame! Steve Jobs is noted in Apple's credits for this patent and we could be assured that his name all but tells us that this program isn't a fantasy of an Apple engineer.  The implications of such a marketing move could rock the industry.

New LED iMacs: Another Apple Patent Comes to Life

On March 28, 2009, Patently Apple boldly reported that Apple Patent May Point to LED iMac's Later this Year. Today, Apple has delivered on that in spades. Apple states that "when a display has more pixels, you need to push more light through them to achieve the best picture possible. LED backlighting in the new iMac does exactly that, with remarkable brightness and efficiency. Because the LED backlight doesn’t take up much space, the iMac enclosure stays thin — even with all the high-performance components inside." The new 21.5-inch iMac features 1920-by-1080 HD resolution. Apple engineers could simply have stretched that resolution up and out for the 27-inch iMac. Instead, they took the display well beyond HD with 2560-by-1440 resolution. That’s 78 percent more pixels than the 21.5-inch iMac. It's great to see the tight timeline between Apple's patent application publication and their product actually coming to market.  The call was right, and how sweet it is.

Apple Wins Crucial iPhone Encryption & WebObjects Patents

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of five newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. The most crucial patent within this group covers Apple's iPhone Encryption technology. During Apple's WWDC 2009, Phil Schiller stated that businesses had asked for hardware encryption and that all iPhone 3G-S models would have this security feature. Other notable patents published today include one relating to WebObjects, another to UI elements relating to drag and drop operations and a second design win for Apple's iPod touch 2G.  

Apple Files Two Major Security Patents to Combat Identity Theft, More

The US Patent & Trademark Office published eleven patent applications from Apple Inc. today. The notables within this group include one pertaining to MobileMe (which was posted earlier this morning) and two others relating to new security measures that Apple is working on to combat viruses, trojan horses and perhaps more importantly, identity theft. Identity theft is on the rise, affecting almost 10 million victims in 2008 which was a whopping 22% increase over 2007, according to recent statistics. According to Fortune, Mac owners are richer: 36% have household incomes greater than $100,000, compared with 21% of all U.S. consumers. In context, those who were twice as likely to be victims of identity theft were households with incomes higher than $70,000, according to a US DOJ 2005 report. So it stands to reason that Apple is focusing on how to combat this threat facing their customer base – and today we see two highly detailed patents on the topic of security.

Apple Patent Advances MobileMe to the Next Level

The US Patent & Trademark Office has published a patent application from Apple today that reveals one of the next chapters for Apple's MobileMe. Generally speaking, Apple's patent relates to synchronizing media state across multiple devices. Specifically, the patent provides us with a scenario whereby you'll be able to partially view television or any video content on your iPhone, say during your lunch hour, and then switch to Apple TV when you get home and continue viewing that content from exactly where you left off at lunch without having to manually reposition playback of the content.