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Apple Patent Presents Improved Tethering System

1 cover - Improved Tethering Patent 
Apple will ultimately introduce us to the "Telephonic MacBook" one shiny day. Perhaps when Apple's OS X Lion roars in next year we'll see their MacBook family integrate a blisteringly fast LTE solution - hopefully an LTE-Advanced solution. Obviously Apple wasn't' willing to provide this year's MacBook Air with a telephonic solution, so we'll just have to be patient. Until such time arrives, you could read about Apple's improved yet evolutionary tethering technology in today's patent.

 

Patent Summary

 

An improved tethering system is described in which a handheld device can be used by a user to reach the same network that the handheld device also provides access to for a tethering machine. Specifically, as described herein, a handheld device provides a tethering machine with access to a remote network (e.g., the Internet) through a wireless network that the handheld device is communicatively coupled to. Not only is the handheld device able to support multiple data flows between the tethering machine and the remote network, but also, the handheld device is capable of being used by a user to "surf" or otherwise access the same remote network that the handheld device provides the tethering machine with access to. For example, if the remote network is the Internet and the handheld device is a "smart phone", a user who is holding the smart phone can access the Internet concurrently with one or more applications on the tethering machine that are also access the Internet. Moreover, the smart phone is also capable of concurrently supporting other networked services that the smart phone is designed to provide such as voicemail services, messaging services, and telephony (cell phone) services.

 

An Improved Tethering System

 

Apple's patent FIG. 3 shown below illustrates an improved tethering system. Specifically, a handheld device such as an iPhone (302) provides a tethering machine (301 – such as a MacBook family device) with access to a remote network (305 - e.g., the Internet) through a wireless network that the handheld device is communicatively coupled to. Importantly, not only is the handheld device able to support multiple data flows (310, 311, 312) between the tethering machine and the remote network, but also, the handheld device is capable of being used by a user to "surf" or otherwise access the same remote network that the handheld device provides the tethering machine with access to.

 

2 - improved tethering system 

For example, if the remote network is the Internet and the handheld device is an iPhone, a user who is holding iPhone could access the Internet concurrently with one or more applications (320, 321,322) on the tethering machine that are also accessing the Internet.

 

Apple credits Cahya Masputra as the sole inventor of patent application 20100267368, originally filed in Q2 2009. (Temp Link 1)

 

Other Noteworthy Patent Applications Published Today

 

Patent 20100267286: "Systems and Methods for Providing a Trimless Electronic Device Port." Apple keeps on developing various types of handheld device ports, as we first saw in their July 2010 patent. (Temp Link 2)

 

3 - trimless electroni device port 

Patent 20100269035: "Method for Dynamically Generating a "Table of Contents" View of the HTML-Based Information System." (Temp Link 3)

 

Note: Temp links may only last a few days. When the temp links no longer direct you to the right patents, simply feed the interested patent numbers into this search engine to find links to the related patents.

 

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