Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent that relates to future MacBooks that offer displays with superior privacy in mind when out in public. Apple began their work on such a privacy feature going back to 2009. We covered Apple's first patent on this in 2011. Since that time, Patently Apple has covered two additional patents on this subject matter, 01 & 02, with the latter involving the use of an HMD.  

Apple's newly granted patent primarily relates to a future MacBook and/or iPad display that will provide users with a greater level of privacy when working with the device out in public, the office or at school.

To achieve that, a display may have display layers such as liquid crystal display layers having a liquid crystal layer interposed between a color filter layer and a thin-film transistor layer, organic light-emitting diode layers having organic light-emitting diodes formed from thin-film transistor circuitry, or other types of display layers.

An angle-of-view adjustment layer may overlap the display layers. The angle-of-view adjustment layer may include an array of adjustable louvers that move from a first position in which the angle of view of the display is restricted for a private viewing mode and a second position in which the angle of view of the display is not restricted for a normal viewing mode.

The louvers may contain electrophoretic particles. The louvers may be tapered and may have a narrow end that is less than ten microns wide to increase transmittance in normal viewing mode. The electrophoretic particles may form isolated clusters on a lower substrate in normal viewing mode to further increase the transmittance of the display in normal viewing mode.

The angle-of-view adjustment layer may be a second liquid crystal display layer that is used to block off-axis light. The second liquid crystal layer may be used in conjunction with a lenticular lens array that is interposed between a first liquid crystal display layer and the second liquid crystal display layer.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an illustrative MacBook with a display which is the target device for this invention; FIG. 2 is a schematic of the device that includes an eye or head tracking system.

Apple's patent FIG. 3 above is a cross-sectional side view of an illustrative display having an angle-of-view adjustment layer; FIG. 26 is a cross-sectional side view of an illustrative display having a first display module for providing display content, a lenticular lens array for adjusting the direction of the display content, and a second display module for selectively blocking some of the display content.

For more details, review Apple's granted patent 11,448,908.