Apple Patent Paves Way For iPhone With Full-Face Display, HUD Windows (appleinsider.com) 75
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Apple Insider: Apple on Tuesday was granted a patent detailing technology that allows for ear speakers, cameras and even a heads-up display to hide behind an edge-to-edge screen, a design rumored to debut in a next-generation iPhone later this year. Awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple's U.S. Patent No. 9,543,364 for "Electronic devices having displays with openings" describes a method by which various components can be mounted behind perforations in a device screen that are so small as to be imperceptible to the human eye. This arrangement would allow engineers to design a smartphone or tablet with a true edge-to-edge, or "full face," display. With smartphones becoming increasingly more compact, there has been a push to move essential components behind the active -- or light-emitting -- area of incorporated displays. Apple in its patent suggests mounting sensors and other equipment behind a series of openings, or through-holes, in the active portion of an OLED or similar panel. These openings might be left empty or, if desired, filled with glass, polymers, radio-transparent ceramic or other suitable material. Positioning sensor inputs directly in line with said openings facilitates the gathering of light, radio waves and acoustic signals. Microphones, cameras, antennas, light sensors and other equipment would therefore have unimpeded access beyond the display layer. The design also accommodates larger structures like iPhone's home button. According to the document, openings are formed between pixels, suggesting a self-illuminating display technology like OLED is preferred over traditional LCD structures that require backlight and filter layers. Hole groupings can be arranged in various shapes depending on the application, and might be larger or smaller than the underlying component. If implemented into a future iPhone, the window-based HUD could be Apple's first foray into augmented reality. Apple leaves the mechanics unmentioned, but the system could theoretically go beyond AR and into mixed reality applications.
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Vague, broad patents fall to prior art.
Specific patents fall to altered details.
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- It specifically mentions that it must be an OLED screen.
So they don't own OLED screens. They don't own micro-holes. But they get to patent putting micro-holes in an OLED screen. I see...
They're not really patenting how to make such a screen - they're patenting the idea of having a screen with micro-holes providing access to controls underneath - and then getting a monopoly on the only way to implement such a thing using today's off-the-shelf components, none of which they invented or own. Sounds like a classic 'do A on a B' patent. Rejected (In our dreams).
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Apple has sharp teams of lawyers, which has always been one of their strongest points. They've sued their way to success going back to the days when they ran Apple II cloners out of business and sued anybody who came out with a GUI environment. They continued to run GUI vendors out of business, until they ran up against Windows, and thus effectively gave the GUI dominance to Microsoft.
Thanks, Apple.
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Apple was so far ahead on the GUI in the late 80s that if they had just produced "Macintosh" as an operating environment for all the x86 hardware and UNIX workstations on the market, they would be running the Windows operation now and would have owned that for decades. Instead they wanted to sell their proprietary hardware with their GUI bundled on top. And as said above, they sued all of Microsoft's competitors on the 'x86 platform out of the way for them. While at the same time, Microsoft was making a
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It's basically the grown-up version of calling dibs. And it's pay-to-play.
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I know lots of people working on voice recognition that reference the 'Hello Computer' scene from Star Trek IV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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You do understand the Motorola Star-TAC was DIRECTLY influenced by Star Trek right?
I know lots of people working on voice recognition that reference the 'Hello Computer' scene from Star Trek IV.
Okay, I don't know about that, but Picard was a Jedi, right?
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I believe a pinhole camera behind the screen has also been done. Don't recall by who.
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No, but if it has been done repeatedly with multiple other kinds of screens, there's a good chance that it fails the non-obvious test, unless the means for making those holes is something particularly complex.
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I covered that possibility when I said, "unless the means for making those holes is something particularly complex." If they have a unique way of growing a crystalline lattice with a hole in it, that's novel. But unless the mechanism for creating the hole is novel, the entire patent is likely obvious. After all, routing traces around a hole is basic circuit design, fudging the brightness of adjacent subpixels to hide dead ones is a trivial extension of how digital cameras deal with dead sensor pixels, e
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Y'know what the problem really is with this. They're coming up with an arguably new screen technology, getting a patent monopoly on it, and then applying that monopoly to the whole device, so that only Apple can build 'micro-hole OLED' smartphones.
I could see them being granted a patent on the screen manufacturing process - and collecting royalties from anyone who wants to build such a screen. Or even insisting on being the sole source for such screens. But when they then limit the universe of available
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Imagine if that was the entire point of patents, going back hundreds of years! Oh wait, it is. Licensing is a relatively new application of patents. You're a narcissistic ass who deserves to go his entire life without technology.
Re: Prior Art? (Score:3)
Apple patented magnetic connectors which Japanese appliance manufacturers had been doing for years. The Japanese had been putting magnetic connectors on Rice Cookers, Toasters, and Irons for a few years, then Apple patented the idea of putting using it on a laptop.
In the early 90s, IBM had patented finger scrolling web pages on touchscreen monitors. Apple filed for a patent on finger scrolling on a touchscreen only smartphone display and got it.
My suggestion is that someone patent the idea of putting magnet
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> and Irons for a few years, then Apple patented the idea of putting using it on a laptop.
So basically, Apple patented "doing it on a computer".
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If memory serves, Apple didn't patent magsafe. The licensed it, exclusively, in the the laptop market. The basic tech isn't new at all and the patent has since expired - clearly since there's at least a dozen kickstart/indegogo/etc. crowd funded magnetic connectors for phones and laptops floating around at the moment.
There may have been something unique about the magsafe method as well which separated it from the appliance usage of similar tech.
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Guess I should have googled. Correcting myself and answering your 'question'.
The basic concept of MagSafe is copied from the magnetic power connectors that are part of many deep fryers and Japanese countertop cooking appliances since the early 2000s in order to avoid spilling their dangerously hot contents.[2][3][4] Apple was granted US Patent No. 7311526 on MagSafe ("Magnetic connector for electronic device", issued in 2007) as MagSafe was deemed to be a sufficient improvement due to the connector being s
Re: Prior Art? (Score:2)
This logic invalidates basically anything that comes after 1940. Using your awesome reasoning, nothing about LTE should be patentable, because voice and data transmitted over radio waves has been done since the 1920s.
Details matter.
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Nonsense. It has two benefits. You also have a greater chance of dropping the phone while trying to hold it in a way that doesn't cover up part of the screen. It's pretty obvious why zero-bezel cell phones are good for manufacturers. I have yet to see any reason why they are good for users.
Now a zero-bezel laptop screen... that would be useful....
Re: Need explanation of expected benefit (Score:2)
Or worse, unintentionally clicking something in the on-screen minefield of 'like', '+1', and 'buy now with one click & no subsequent confirmation' that now plagues daily use.
Apple: Everything old is new again! (Score:1)
This "invention" is identical to what movie theaters have been doing with screens since the first talkies replaced silent films. Why does it deserve patent protection?
It reminds me of their "innovative" magnetic power plug...that was technologically identical to the magnetic plugs on electric frying pans dating back to at least the 1940s.
Everything old is new again...
harder to cover your camera (Score:5, Interesting)
That's going to make it a lot harder to cover your camera. The spooks will love it.
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That's going to make it a lot harder to cover your camera. The spooks will love it.
Impossible, I'd say. Because the problem with video chat that any off-spectrum engineer has been trying to solve since the inception of video chat is, how do you make it look like a face to face conversation? How do you establish eye contact in video chat?
The obvious answer to any skilled practitioner of the art has always been to embed the camera in the display itself. For an oblong display that is most frequently used vertically, embed the camera 1/3rd of the way down from the upper short edge, exactly
Should require working prototype (Score:1)
This kind of patent should require a working prototype at least. If apple can build it then might be worth considering a patent. If it is beyond their technology then it is really blocking other people who could develop it first.
I also need to get my patent in for FTL drive, teleporter and replicator etc.
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HUD Windows? (Score:2)
Down with title case (Score:2)
Apple Patent Paves Way For iPhone With Full-Face Display, HUD Windows
Not "Windows," but "windows," of course.
Title case is a pointless, arbitrary, and confusing tradition. Let it die.
No-one Writes Anything Else Like This, So Why News Headlines?
I just want an AR motorcycle helmet (Score:1)
.. So I don't have to look down at my instrument cluster when trying to navigate traffic. Fuck you, skully.
Openings (Score:3)
One. 3.5mm. For a headphone. And I'll go away satisfied.
Full-face display? (Score:2)
Now that's innovation [pcadvisor.co.uk]
As opposed to what? (Score:2)
"technology that allows for ear speakers"
As opposed to what, nose speakers? Toe speakers? Speakers in suppository form?
"...that allows for ear speakers" (Score:2)
How do I hold the damned thing? (Score:2)