Apple Explores Using An iPhone, iPad To Power a Laptop (appleinsider.com) 76
According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple has filed a patent for an "Electronic accessory device." It describes a "thin" accessory that contains traditional laptop hardware like a large display, physical keyboard, GPU, ports and more -- all of which is powered by an iPhone or iPad. The device powering the hardware would fit into a slot built into the accessory. AppleInsider reports: While the accessory can take many forms, the document for the most part remains limited in scope to housings that mimic laptop form factors. In some embodiments, for example, the accessory includes a port shaped to accommodate a host iPhone or iPad. Located in the base portion, this slot might also incorporate a communications interface and a means of power transfer, perhaps Lightning or a Smart Connector. Alternatively, a host device might transfer data and commands to the accessory via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or other wireless protocol. Onboard memory modules would further extend an iOS device's capabilities. Though the document fails to delve into details, accessory memory would presumably allow an iPhone or iPad to write and read app data. In other cases, a secondary operating system or firmware might be installed to imitate a laptop environment or store laptop-ready versions of iOS apps. In addition to crunching numbers, a host device might also double as a touch input. For example, an iPhone positioned below the accessory's keyboard can serve as the unit's multitouch touchpad, complete with Force Touch input and haptic feedback. Coincidentally, the surface area of a 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus is very similar to that of the enlarged trackpad on Apple's new MacBook Pro models. Some embodiments also allow for the accessory to carry an internal GPU, helping a host device power the larger display or facilitate graphics rendering not possible on iPhone or iPad alone. Since the accessory is technically powered by iOS, its built-in display is touch-capable, an oft-requested feature for Mac. Alternatively, certain embodiments have an iPad serving as the accessory's screen, with keyboard, memory, GPU and other operating guts located in the attached base portion. This latter design resembles a beefed up version of Apple's Smart Case for iPad.
Re: (Score:2)
So they just reinvented the docking station? (Score:1)
So much prior art it's not funny. I've seen articles for years discussing using smartphones as PC replacements using some kind of dock.
Even the existing transformer tables are also quite close, with the exception that they use the tablet's display.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But none of that prior art was an Apple product. Everything Apple makes is innovative and new therefore worthy of a patent.
Motorola Atrix Lapdock (Score:2, Informative)
"Quite close" seems like an understatement when I remember this http://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Motorola-ATRIX-4G-Laptop-Dock-Review_id2667 [phonearena.com] from 20011/12.
Re: (Score:1)
aha but it's a docking station "on the internet"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Crap, I thought of this 5-7 years ago, talked about it while drinking many times. And yes, specifically involving Apple hardware. Slot in the car dash to insert the phone/pad. They added ApplePlay which does some of the same. But other idea was latptop shell that could give extra battery and maybe processing power. But even then it was so obvious I didn't pursue. I'm sure they will get a slam dunk approval even though it was so obvious.
Re: (Score:2)
The Motorola Atrix did something similar...
We've even had discussions on this very site about building devices almost identical to what apple proposes...
And yet they will probably be granted this patent anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of patents. All patents have prior art. Indeed they list the prior art in the patent. Patents take something that is already patented, and add some new things. Patents are never for something that is entirely new, the always build on what came before.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is claim 1 from Apple's patent application.
1. An electronic accessory device, comprising: an operational component that provides an output to a user; a housing carrying the operational component, the housing having a recess; and a control interface coupled to the operational component and configured to receive a control signal from an electronic host device when the electronic host device is positioned within the recess and coupled to the control interface, wherein the electronic accessory device is inoperable without the electronic host device being coupled to the control interface.
Can you point out to me what are the "new things" in that? I'd say the Motorola Atrix fit every last piece of that. But Apple is claiming it as novel and asking for patent protection on it.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't say every claim contained something new. But the patent does. 2 examples:
"4. The electronic accessory device as recited in claim 3, wherein the operational component comprises an accessory display configured to present visual content. "
"5. The electronic accessory device as recited in claim 4, wherein the electronic host device comprises an input device configured to detect a touch event. "
Neither of these are present in the Atrix Lapdock, as it places the phone behind the laptop screen. The Apple
Re: (Score:2)
That isn't how patents work. Every claim is independently asserted to be a novel invention. If someone violates even one claim, they're violating the patent.
By the way, "an accessory display configured to present visual content" is also known as an external monitor. An "input device configured to detect a touch event" is also known as a trackpad. The Atrix dock had both. So have countless other docking stations for various computers over the years.
Re: (Score:2)
The Atrix Lapdock didn't use the phone for either touch or display.
Re: (Score:2)
That isn't how patents work. Every claim is independently asserted to be a novel invention. If someone violates even one claim, they're violating the patent.
Thanks for exactly explaining how a a patent doesn't work. I bet you are just as artistic with software.
Re: (Score:2)
"4. The electronic accessory device as recited in claim 3, wherein the operational component comprises an accessory display configured to present visual content. "
I'll refer you to claim 1:
1. An electronic accessory device, comprising: an operational component that provides an output to a user; a housing carrying the operational component, the housing having a recess; and a control interface coupled to the operational component and configured to receive a control signal from an electronic host device when the electronic host device is positioned within the recess and coupled to the control interface, wherein the electronic accessory device is inoperable without the electronic host device being coupled to the control interface.
The "operational component" is the dock/display, not the phone; the phone is, later, referred to as the "electronic host device". There is nothing novel in #1, as it's describing precisely what the Motorola Atrix and Lapdock did; there's also nothing novel in #4, it's simply describing an external display as part of a dock which, again is what the Atrix and Lapdock did.
"5. The electronic accessory device as recited in claim 4, wherein the electronic host device comprises an input device configured to detect a touch event. "
Indeed, and the Atrix did still respond to touch when docked. I distinctly recall wondering why, as you had to hav
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not going to argue your interpretation of individual phrases. This patent is for a phone placed where a touchscreen would be in a laptop, so that it can be used for both touch and display.
The Atrix Lapdock had the phone vertically behind the laptop screen where it could not be used for touch or a secondary display.
Completely different.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I did. It's shit.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought we were debating the validity of this patent; were we not? What, exactly, do you think goes on in court, when the validity of a patent is being tried? More or less, they're arguing over the interpretation of individual phrases.
If you don't want to do that, you must not have a very strong belief in the validity of this patent. You, quite simply, have no argument, so you turn to personal attacks, as always.
Unlike you, I actually read the pat
Re: (Score:2)
yeah because thats not that big of an addition.
it's not worth giving a patent for, frankly.
especially when you could have used your touchscreen phone as a trackpad(without a dock) for a laptop since.. well fucking since 2001 or so.
maybe they're patenting using lighting connector.. but thats another thing, you shouldnt be able to patent the same fucking thing with using a different connector.
Re: (Score:2)
before libreoffice was cool
This is 2017 and we are still "before libreoffice was cool"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, come on. The battery life on the iPhone isn't that bad.
Sent from my iPh
Re: (Score:2)
What the hell are you doing with your phone to drain the battery in "barely a day" ? My iPhone lasts for 3 days easy, receiving email and push notifications all day, bluetooth turned on 24/7, mostly on WiFi the whole time.
Duo Dock? (Score:2)
My first thought was that this is the Duo Dock for the smart phone generation: taking a smaller portable form factor and converting it into a more traditional form factor (phone/tablet -> laptop vs. laptop -> desktop). I don't know if Apple was the first at docking stations, but they were certainly doing it a quarter century ago.
Sounds a lot like USB-Câ power delivery (Score:3)
My eyes kind of glazed over reading the description but none of this sounded like anything you can't already do with USB-C power delivery mode. You can already run a 1080p display off of your cell phone, both power and data on the same cable. If you hook it up to a capable hub you can plug in your mouse and keyboard too
Re: (Score:2)
My eyes kind of glazed over reading the description but none of this sounded like anything you can't already do with USB-C power delivery mode.
The key here is that it's not the host providing the power delivery. I haven't been keeping up with the latest USB spec but this direction of power flow sounds like it would have been in breach of earlier USB specs for everything except USB-OTG which turning a device into a host necessitates the reverse of the normal power flow.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe USB-C and USB Power Delivery (USB PD) specs had this specifically in mind. They changed the fixed concept of one device being the host/master and one being the guest/slave in lieu of the devices being able to negotiate roles as needed.
Re: (Score:2)
If that is true that is awesome. I have some reading to do.
Re: (Score:2)
In
Already done by BlackBerry (Score:3)
...and probably everyone else.
What else do you call it when you can connect your phone to an external keyboard, monitor, and control devices? The phone did most things by Bluetooth but video (and audio optionally) over HDMI. It would also connect to Samba shares for file access.
Now, if I can put my phone down on the opened 'laptop' and it's smart enough to act as a trackpad for the external device while drawing power from it and sending video and audio to it, that'd be nice.
I don't really need massively upgraded processing power or video - my phone itself is already good enough for most purposes, and if the external device has all those upgrades, I'd probably use it instead of the phone and not bother with the whole 'docking' part.
Totally abandoning their core userbase (Score:5, Interesting)
1) iOS doesn't support color profiles. While Apple does calibrate the screens, there's no way for users to add their own color profile. No way to add a printer profile. No way to switch to AdobeRGB if/when the iOS devices get OLED screens and you want to edit the full color information captured by your DSLR.
2) iOS relies on a fixed resolution. That's why when they increased resolution on the iPhone and iPad, they had to do it by doubling the resolution. It was the only way to insure that apps written with the old resolution would still display properly. Basically they have the same problem with old apps on high-PPI screens as Windows does. (Ironically, Android does support arbitrary scaling based on PPI. So Android is more more like MacOS and OS X in this respect than iOS is.)
An iOS-based laptop may suit the needs of the casual user (browser, facebook, office apps). But it's totally unsuitable for graphics/photo/video professionals.
Re:Totally abandoning their core userbase (Score:4, Interesting)
They're putting short term profits ahead of the long game. Long before the iPhone came out OS X came bundled with XCode [wikipedia.org]. Anyone wanting to learn to code for the Mac could do it out of the box starting with 10.3. For a college student that wasn't quite ready to get started in Linux (And this was Linux 2003 mind you) it was amazing that I could compile stuff out of the box without dealing with cygwin on Windows XP.
If you coded in XCode the PPC-64, x86 and x86-64 migrations were relatively painless. When the iPhone finally got a dev kit the tools had been out for 5+ years. People were able to hop in to iPhone development. Distributed builds over ZeroConf have been supported for a while as well. Have a dozen machines sitting idle? Hit compile and distribute the load.
Apple has fallen completely on their face supporting the people that make the pretty widget iPhone apps. Unless they start churning out development tools there isn't going to be a machine to do iOS n+2 development on.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You have xCode available for free in the App Store. What's more important: now you can run your own apps in your iOS devices without an Apple Developer account so the situation is better in this aspect than before.
Re: (Score:2)
A few comments...
Resolution-agnostic fonts. This has been a part of Macs since their inception [...]
Mac's "inception" was 1984 and, no, fonts were not resolution-agnostic.
Apple developed Postscript based on the same concept.
Adobe developed Postscript and worked with NeXT to develop Display Postscript. Apple had their own technology for fonts as part QuickDraw GX, which went nowhere.
iOS relies on a fixed resolution.
I'll admit, I'm not up on the latest for iOS. But last I looked, iOS now has support for variable resolution. But you're right that it didn't initially.
Re: (Score:2)
you think iveyyy understood anything about that? hell no.
if he did, then ios would have had arbitrary dpi support for a long time.
and btw windows itself has supported arbitrary dpi for a long, long, long time now. some asian manufacturer volume control apps and such are just the stuff that broke.
also ios fixed resolutions were a cancer on mobile app design for a long time and now theres on the market thousands of app designers who can only draw a photoshop picture for a fixed size screen and can't comprehen
Two points of bullshit (Score:2)
iOS doesn't support color profiles.
Maybe you should read more before you type [ipadforphotographers.com].
Just because they don't provide you a way to assign a color profile does not mean iOS does not support color profiles... They have to because different devices now support a number of different gamuts.
iOS relies on a fixed resolution.
No, no it does not. It does specify things in points, but at this point there are a lot of iOS devices that are not just double the resolution of the original iPhone...
iOS supports all kinds of tec
Re: (Score:2)
iOS relies on a fixed resolution. That's why when they increased resolution on the iPhone and iPad, they had to do it by doubling the resolution. It was the only way to insure that apps written with the old resolution would still display properly. Basically they have the same problem with old apps on high-PPI screens as Windows does. (Ironically, Android does support arbitrary scaling based on PPI. So Android is more more like MacOS and OS X in this respect than iOS is.)
iOS supports at least 6 different resolutions: iPhone 4, iPhone SE, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 plus and Ipads. What are you talking about ?
An iOS-based laptop may suit the needs of the casual user (browser, facebook, office apps). But it's totally unsuitable for graphics/photo/video professionals.
I doubt it would be the point.
Re: (Score:2)
There isn't much of an appreciable difference between Windows and OSX when it comes to colour profiling anymore. The OS provides the information to the software, and the software handles it. Soft-proofing has always been the domain of the software package itself and not the OS. In that regard OSX and Windows are very much equal and have been since the XP days.
It still dumps your loaded color profile if the damn UAC elevation prompt pops up (their method of darkening the screen outside the dialog seems to do it). It's done this since Win 7 and Microsoft still hasn't bothered fixing it. The companies which make color profiling equipment have had to make software work-arounds for it.
Two things here: a) If you're getting a UAC prompt doing normal day to day work there is something wrong. And by extension the "work around" is for ve
Re: (Score:2)
X11 reads the monitor DPI too, and also scales fonts, as did SGI IRIX back in the day...
Windows as you rightly point out, doesn't bother, and because of this a lot of monitors don't actually supply the required information.
People now seem to think that the point measurement used for fonts relates to pixels on screen rather than any physical size, and it's a commonly held belief that a larger monitor just makes everything bigger rather than providing more space.
How is that abandoning them? (Score:2)
Conversion therapy (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't wait to see the cluster fuck of dongles Apple will require for this union of parts.
a laptop with no user file system and sandboxed ap (Score:2)
a laptop with no user file system and only runs sandboxes apps is useless.
Re: (Score:1)
Steve Jobs wanted the iPad to be a little mac, not a big iPhone. We can only dream.
Sorry Apple... (Score:4, Informative)
...but the Asus PadPhone is a 5 years old product by now. No need to patent it, just pay for royalties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also, isn't it kinda weird how Apple is adamantly against a touchscreen MacBook, yet they go and patent something like this?
Re: (Score:3)
Lapdock 100 did that in 2011 (Score:2)
Someone at the patent office needs to be fired (Score:3)
..Located in the base portion, this slot might also incorporate a communications interface and a means of power transfer, perhaps Lightning or a Smart Connector.
Perhaps it will have a Firewire adaptor, a db-25 port, or attach directly to your favorite adult toy. "Perhaps" is such a non-specific word this alone should fail any sort of novelty test.
Alternatively, a host device might transfer data and commands to the accessory via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or other wireless protocol. Onboard memory modules would further extend an iOS device's capabilities. Though the document fails to delve into details, accessory memory would presumably allow an iPhone or iPad to write and read app data. ...
Alternatively, certain embodiments have an iPad serving as the accessory's screen, with keyboard, memory, GPU and other operating guts located in the attached base portion.
So, just like the Microsoft Surface, then? Or is this more like any of the android tablets that have cases with bluetooth keyboards built-in?
This latter design resembles a beefed up version of Apple's Smart Case for iPad.
Oh, so they have their own prior art.