Patently Apple

Apple Introduces Presence Detection for Notebooks, Desktops & TV

First came the news of a future iPhone or perhaps even Apple's mysterious tablet design and now a second very cool patent has surfaced from the US Patent and Trademark Office that tells us that Apple may have presence detection coming to hardware in the not too distant future. The new technology will remotely detect a person's presence without requiring physical input by the user. The technology could be built right into the physical frame of various Mac hardware or set within iSight itself. Apple may employ SONAR as one of the methods of achieving this feat. Apple also makes a side note that that this technology could apply to a future a television – and even gives us a peek at a MacBook with a numeric pad. It sounds like a very cool feature – though beware, it might just freak your cat out.

Find out where Apple's latest iTunes Tagging Technology is Going

Apple introduced their next generation iPod Nano yesterday which comes with a new marketing feature called "iTunes Tagging." This nifty little feature is going to be hot and one of the most appreciated features over the years. We've all been there. We hear a tune on the radio and missed the DJ's description of the tune – or they ripped it off too quickly to catch. Yikes – it's a tune you want, a tune you can't get out of your head and you just can't find the name of that tune. Well, for those buying the new iPod Nano, that's an inconvenience of the past.  Apple's new iTunes Tagging allows you to see the metadata pertaining to that tune and allows you to tag it so that when you get home, the tunes information is simply sitting in a file on iTunes ready for you to review and buy it.  Tagging is simply a click of the iPod's click wheel. Apple's latest feature has been in the works at Apple for years. Apple finally executing on this feature fulfills one of their 2008 patent applications which richly details the advances of tagging and where it could be going in the bigger scheme of things.   

  

Apple TV to Take Sporting Events to a Whole New Level

 
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of four newly granted patents for Apple Inc. yesterday and one of them was covered earlier this morning in our other report titled Apple Granted Patents for Smartbook & Find My iPhone Related Technologies. In fact, this is simply the second segment of that patent originally titled "Personal items network, and associated methods."  In this focused report, we explore Apple's continuing march into sports monitoring devices and systems which we first covered in our March report. The difference in this report is that we see that the patent calls for a TV system to advance the concepts of movement and event monitoring systems in a very entertaining way. Lord knows that Apple TV needs a killer app of its very own to catapult this hobby device into being a contender for this all important in-home market segment. The patent also reveals an advanced heart rate monitor system and in many ways, Apple may be considering a Nike+iPod-like equivalent program for skiers, snowboarders and related sports.

Apple Secretly Adding Voice Command Technology into Apple TV

Jerome R. Bellegarda is one of Apple's leading Spoken Language Group engineers. He's been involved in writing many of Apple's patents over the years relating to Speech Recognition and Text-to-Speech Synthesis. He's written a book on Latent Semantic Mapping and has spoken at the Human Language Technology Conference on comparative analysis of semantic inference, a presentation partly sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. Suffice to say that Mr. Bellegarda is a leader in his field and adds incredible weight to today's patent application titled Context-aware unit selection. What's so exciting about another speech recognition related patent? Well, simply put, it's the first patent in a long stretch of such patents that finally provides us with a glance or glimmer of where Apple might be going with this technology in terms of a commercial application.

Apple Patent Reveals Voice Commands Coming to iPod, iPhone & Apple TV

On October 9, 2008, the US Patent & Trademark Office published an Apple patent application relating to voice activation technology that is being developed for the iPod, iPhone and Apple TV. The patent notes that the voice activation system could be robust and context sensitive. The voice activation can also be utilized without any preparatory user action with respect to the portable electronic device. The patent presents examples of voice commands relating to music, business meetings or calendar events, iPhone camera controls, various voicemail commands and more. 

Apple Patent Reveals iTunes TV Broadcast Services Coming to the iPod/iPhone

On July 31, 2008, the US Patent & Trademark Office published an Apple patent application that generally relates to receiving broadcasts and in particular to systems and methods for communicating and storing information associated with data within a broadcast. Apple's patent discusses broadcast services that will be made available from iTunes that will work with a new add-on accessory for the iPod and iPhone.  The proposed accessory would also work with Yahoo and Microsoft subscription services - which make you wonder if Apple is contemplating such a service of their own in the not too distant future. This report also introduces another similar iPod accessory that will be available for the iPod later this year from a third party.    

 

Apple Working on 3D Holographic Projection Displays

 

On March 20, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a new patent application of Apple's that reveals they're working on a next generation 3D Holographic-like display system. In one application, Apple's display system would automatically authenticate a user, greet them and provide a customized desktop for just that user. Something along the lines of how new computer car systems will adjust the seat and controls for a particular driver.  The Holographic-like displays are based on a projection system and in many cases the impression given is that these systems would apply to applications as diverse as video conferencing, scientific modeling, entertainment and perhaps even forensics. Think of the TV show "Bones" and their use of a device called holographic "angelator."  One of the unique aspects of this invention is that users won't be hassled with 3D glasses or headgear of any kind.