An Apple patent was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on September 16, 2010 that basically covered the advances in scrolling acceleration for iOS devices like the iPhone and iPod touch. Yet the most interesting aspects to this patent actually went beyond discussing the advances of scrolling acceleration methodologies. In fact, what turned my head was that the patent summary actually begins by pointing to a touchscreen device that has yet to surface: the iMac. The patent then points to the fact that accelerated touchscreen scrolling will also apply to the MacBook. Furthermore, the patent also indirectly confesses to future applications that could be coming to said touch devices. The first is noted as being a "website design" application, which could mean a touch version of iLife's iWeb, and the other is a "drawing" application – which has appeared in other Apple patents and has been a long standing rumor. Oh the little gems that awaits us in Apple's patents.
On September 14, 2010, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple's latest trademark application for "AirPrint" under application85129144. Apple has filed their trademark under four distinct International Classes which are covered in this report in full. Apple first introduced AirPrint during their special iPod event on September 15, 2010. AirPrint will be included in Apple's free iOS 4.2 software update available in November. AirPrint automatically finds printers on local networks and can print text, photos and graphics to them wirelessly over Wi-Fi. "AirPrint is Apple's powerful new printing architecture that matches the simplicity of iOS—no set up, no configuration, no printer drivers and no software to download," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.
On September 10, 2010 Patently Apple initially covered the newly discovered patent infringement lawsuit that Apple launched against Sanho Corporation, the maker of the HyperMac product line. The original filing delayed the release of the complaint from being made public until today. The complaint is a whopper considering that it covers six distinct patents that Sanho Corporation has allegedly infringed. All of the revealed patents relate to, in one way or another, cables and the MagSafe connector specifically. Our report presents you with an overview of the complaint in addition to providing you with hyperlinks to each of the infringed patents that were found in this lawsuit for easy review.
On September 17, 2010, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple's latest trademark filings for the revised "iTunes" logo under applications 85128276 and 85128460. Apple has filed their trademark under five different and distinct International Classes. The details within each classification are presented in our report and cover a wide range of matters including music, media players, set-top-boxes, retail stores, telecommunications and entertainment. The filing also adds a new social networking classification. The new classification covers Apple's recently added "social network for music" service called Ping. Apple's iTunes is all about buying, playing and syncing your media content in a cool and simple way.
A simple translation update in the Canadian Trademark Office appears to have also brought about a new TV classification code update for Apple's figurative iPad Trademark. With TV services like Hulu coming to the iPad, it stands to reason why Apple has begun to update their trademarks to cover television services. Enclosed in this report is Apple's Canadian filing update to application 1490082.
This is one of those patents that are for the super techno-geeks amongst us who love to get under the hood of their machines and tinker with everything. With that said – Apple's patent generally relates to cache memory management and, more particularly, to cache memory management in multi-core central processing units. Apple's patent steps into the area of bus snooping, a technique used in distributed shared memory systems and multiprocessors to achieve cache coherence. Apple's patent is about reducing snoop traffic which will provide Apple's entire line-up of Macs with better power efficiency for quad core systems and future Sandy Bridge configurations and beyond.
According to Wikipedia, Zhuyin is the first official phonetic system introduced in 1910s for transcribing Chinese, especially Mandarin. With that in mind, the main patent in this report covers Apple's virtual keyboard that accommodates Zhuyin symbols table and more. The second patent touched on today discusses wireless services in respect to advertising, multiplayer games, social networking on services like Facebook or Twitter and more.
At IDF this week Paul Otellini presented us with a broad overview of the multiple ways in which Intel is aggressively acquiring companies as they transform from being primarily a one dimensional chip company for computers and servers into a multi-tiered computing solutions provider. In David Perlmutter's keynote we learned about a great new 3D wand that is in the making that happens to mirror what Apple is working on in their lab. In a third keynote delivered by Intel's Doug Davis, we were given an overview of the rapid changes that are occurring with Intel's Atom Processors which will be entering the embedded space in 2011. Yet once again, the surprise of this keynote came in the form of a presentation by Dell who revealed a new notebook-tablet. It appears that Dell is on cue to beat Apple to market with this new hybrid notebook in time for the all-important Christmas shopping season. This report shows you Dell's device and some of the changes coming to Intel's Atom processor.
There were 27 Apple patent applications published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Ten of those dealt with accessory functionality such as identification processes, communication techniques, application protocols and all manner of boredom. Yet one stood out from the pack. It's about an accessory transceiver that could provide a mobile device like the iPod touch with access to a mobile telephone network. Did that catch your attention?
Over the years there have been some really dynamic opening IDF keynotes from Intel's CEO Paul Otellini. While this wasn't one of them, there was certainly a very important message for the whole industry to hear loud and clear. Why? Because while companies like Apple are changing their business model by stepping into the chip business, Intel is likewise stepping out of their traditional chip-centric role in the marketplace to become a total "Solutions Provider." Yet Intel isn't just changing, they're aggressively changing as they rapidly acquire new companies that will help them shape their new emerging business model. Last year's big news was their acquisition of Wind River. This year the train is picking up steam as they acquired McAfee for security software, Infineon for 3G and LTE technology and lastly acquiring the Texas Instruments cable modem business so as to fast-track their Smart TV initiatives. Beyond acquisitions, Otellini provided us with a peek at Sandy Bridge and provided us with an overview of what that powerful architecture will bring to the desktop in 2011. Yet it was a little segment at the end of the Perlmutter keynote that struck home the hardest. We were presented with a demo of a 3D Wand that could only come to life thanks to Sandy Bridge's powerful CPU/GPU architecture; a wand that resembled the outline of a recent Apple patent. Yet there was a twist to this wand that Apple could definitely adopt that would open the door to some rather interesting video gameplay. So tune in and we'll show you what all the fuss is all about.
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 15 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today which included design patents for the iPod armband and MacBook Pro. The other notables within this group include one relating to updating playlists, another relating to connector receptacle housings and one relating to GarageBand. While there are a number of other interesting granted patents today, perhaps the most important is one relating to the iPod's Hybrid Button: a patent that Apple may be able to enforce on copy cat iPod OEMs going forward.
Apple is at it again. They've apparently acquired yet another target marketing patent and now that they're rolling iAd out aggressively, there's no turning back. Some believe that iAd could eat up half the mobile ad marketin the future while most think that Apple is really out to challenge Google. More importantly perhaps is that actual paying customers of iAd's services, like Nissan, have seen their ad time-traffic soar ten-fold. All the more reason why Apple is seeking to further fine-tune their target marketing capabilities - and in today's patent report we'll take you on a short trek through the mindset of the ad industry as it schemes to further burrow their tracking technology into Apple's iOS devices like only Mad Men could.
