Apple Accelerometer Patents and a Tablet Mac?

[nagromme]

Yeah I noticed on Apple's laptops even with the newly updated resolutation it is still low compared to dell's laptops. Any thoughts on this? I know that it pisses me off.

Compare to SOME Dell models. The reason is clear:

More resolution/tinier pixels has obvious benefits for some people: it's worth it to be able to fit more windows and text.

But more resolution/tinier pixels has obvious PROBLEMS too: it makes the screen and text less readable and harder on the eyes. Less usable for long periods. Less usable if your eyes aren't perfect. I suspect this is an issue for very many people.

So Apple could either offer a range of screen choices (an expensive proposition unless sales volume is really high), or they can pick a happy medium.

Not everyone wants tiny text to peer at--and if you enlarge the text it's sharp, but sharpness is hardly a problem on any Apple display.

I actually think the pixels are TOO small on current Mac laptops AND on Cinema Displays. Others, like you, wish those pixels were even smaller. Different needs for different people.

Two things to keep in mind:

1. Shrinking things tiny to fit more on-screen sounds great, but Exposé is a good (in some ways better) solution: look at things nice and big, but shrink them WHEN you need to for moving between windows/documents. MS Windows doesn't have Exposé, and when I use a non-Exposé computer I feel really cramped. I'd much rather have Exposé than have everything tiny all the time.

2. The best of both worlds comes if you have tiny pixels AND a fully, globally, easily scalable UI. Every icon, menu, button and text scaled together smoothly and sharply. Then you can set the balance YOU want, and the tinier pixels means extra sharpness. Neither Windows nor Mac OS is there yet (windows is closer, in that you can re-size menus etc.) but both Leopard and Vista are expected to have this.

 

[hayesk]

Now what about taking the iPod screen and having it cover the entire front of the iPod and use this technology to navigate?

Hmmm... when you go jogging, you'd experience a whole new "Shuffle"

 

[1macker1]

I like the idea, and for joggin, u can use the 'hold' button.

Hmmm... when you go jogging, you'd experience a whole new "Shuffle"

 

[lacrossegoalie4]

I can think of about 100 (fellow) med. students who are just waiting to jump on the Apple Tablet. Some have given in and bought Gateways or Toshibas....the tablets are so helpful in the med. profession. Let's go Steve!

 

[PlayUltimate]

Blackberry?

Not. Happening. Ever.

I'm not so sure. I could see a OSX Blackberry being quite popular especially if it had an iPod player included.

 

[PlayUltimate]

3rd Base Coaches....

OK. Drop behind the back, catch it between the legs, spin around like a balarina, and jump up and down twice. That's my password. Just don't tell anyone.

that's who this device is for

 

[MacinDoc]

This just protects the idea in case Apple might want to use it some time in the future; it has no bearing on Apple's upcoming planned product releases or product development...

 

[EricNau]

I have never, and will never see the point of a tablet PC, it's like a notebook only not as good.

Apple would have to do something truly amazing before they could impress me with a tablet.

 

[kjs862]

Compare to SOME Dell models. The reason is clear:

More resolution/tinier pixels has obvious benefits for some people: it's worth it to be able to fit more windows and text.

But more resolution/tinier pixels has obvious PROBLEMS too: it makes the screen and text less readable and harder on the eyes. Less usable for long periods. Less usable if your eyes aren't perfect. I suspect this is an issue for very many people.

So Apple could either offer a range of screen choices (an expensive proposition unless sales volume is really high), or they can pick a happy medium.

Not everyone wants tiny text to peer at--and if you enlarge the text it's sharp, but sharpness is hardly a problem on any Apple display.

I actually think the pixels are TOO small on current Mac laptops AND on Cinema Displays. Others, like you, wish those pixels were even smaller. Different needs for different people.

Two things to keep in mind:

1. Shrinking things tiny to fit more on-screen sounds great, but Exposé is a good (in some ways better) solution: look at things nice and big, but shrink them WHEN you need to for moving between windows/documents. MS Windows doesn't have Exposé, and when I use a non-Exposé computer I feel really cramped. I'd much rather have Exposé than have everything tiny all the time.

2. The best of both worlds comes if you have tiny pixels AND a fully, globally, easily scalable UI. Every icon, menu, button and text scaled together smoothly and sharply. Then you can set the balance YOU want, and the tinier pixels means extra sharpness. Neither Windows nor Mac OS is there yet (windows is closer, in that you can re-size menus etc.) but both Leopard and Vista are expected to have this.

I can definitely understand how some people might not want a high resolution for the reasons you mentioned, but Apple should still offer that option of a high resolution especially on their "pro" machines. If a user choose not to utilize the full resolution of the machine, they can simply go to system preferences and lower the resolution.

 

[steve_hill4]

Hmmm. DigitalPaper. As light as a notepad, as easy to use as pen and paper. But digital. 1080i compatible, Wireless 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.0, 1/4" thick, running a full version of OS-X 10.5. 12 Hour battery life, but the writing surface is also solar charging the battery... Vaopor-ware? Maybe. But this is a patent. Not some giant iPod. iPod=Music. Not media playing colour, not video-video pda from.... just leave my scroll wheel and monochrome display alone. GEN 2 forever! Sorry... I hate the new iPods. No firewire booting, no firewire port, plays music videos? What? iPod? Um... No.

Sorry, not to digress... But a Tablet Mac running Dual Core Yonnah or a Freescale Dual core would be lovely. Wireless, inkwell... smaller than an iBook (MacBook). More battery life. Like a MacBook... Mini? Perhaps? MacBook Nano? Hmmm... How about Revenge of the Newtons Episode III. Badly rendered with no storyline to speak of and some rasta-celtic dinasour... Digressing again..

Nevermind.

Just pop two of these little pills into your mouth and lie back. Everything will be normal again soon.

 

[cr2sh]

I have never, and will never see the point of a tablet PC, it's like a notebook only not as good.

Even Microsoft has done some good things with tablet edition.

I've owned tablets and I think they're great. I'd love to have an apple.

But to state that you'll NEVER see the point of a tablet... might be a little close minded. Trust me.. they're cool for laying on the couch and surfing the web.

 

[steve_hill4]

I can definitely understand how some people might not want a high resolution for the reasons you mentioned, but Apple should still offer that option of a high resolution especially on their "pro" machines. If a user choose not to utilize the full resolution of the machine, they can simply go to system preferences and lower the resolution.

I agree, I almost always use the highest res available, and my viewing style adjusts to it. When I swtiched from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 on the same monitor, it looked too small, now I hate seeing these monitors below their maximum res. I'll max out my MacBook Pro to 1440x900, but if they offered higher, I'd probably take that instead. I trust the manufacturers to decide the optimum viewing experience and tell us what it is. I know some see this as dictating to us, but I don't see the need to up the number of pixels and have to increase text, icon and dock size in order to make it viewable again, it almost defeats the object of it.

Now, if they'd changed the res to equal or slightly above 1080 lines for HD, that would have been the best move. It would be great viewing 1080p HD video on the go.

 

[andrewm]

I feel that the iPod may be headed the direction of the Palm, but with a full hard drive inside. It lacks only a stylus and a large screen at this time; if Apple comes out with a miniature OS X, adds a stylus, and develops an iTunesMini software with a touch-sensitive <i>screen-based</i> clickwheel, they might have something (not to mention get themselves out of one of the main conflicts with Creative).

 

[Fukui]

Image having a large schematic too big to fit onto the screen, so when you slide the tablet up or down it scrolls the view, just like you were looking at a larger piece of paper...

Hmm, maybe the next "iPod" to come from apple?

 

[iMeowbot]

IBM/Lenovo had ths acellerometer and hard drive protection for a full year before Apple had it. How the USPTO can have a patent on this is nuts. Apple did not invent it.

Apple filed a few years before IBM introduced their Active Protection system, and filing first wins in the patent system.

It's probably worth noting that the application mentioned at the top of this thread is not describing a future or unannounced product. The current PowerBooks already do this.

 

[Norse Son]

Here's my 2-cents + $599.97 on the matter.

To save typing I pasted text from a post I made last week, regarding the rumors on an actual video iPod. If you think it through, this patent could be used on such a device...
________________________________

"Well, how about trying this on for size:
• Give it a 5.5-7" diagonal OLED screen (to avoid backlight battery drain).
• Allow watching video content in landscape view...
• But in portrait view it has Newton/Palm-like functions...
• Have it run a MacOS X-Lite "Tigger", that has "condensed versions" of Safari, Mail, Widgets, iTunes, Front Row, DVD Player (no DVD drive, though - see below), Text Edit, Stickies...
• Input is via Inkwell (Newton OS influenced) or an onscreen mini-keyboard on the touch-sensitive screen.
• It has built-in WiFi (802.11g) and Bluetooth (for external keyboards, etc.).
• Ports are FrWr400, USB2, optical i/o, and mini-DVI (or other video connector).
• It has an 80GB 1.8" SATA(?) hard drive.
• It has (under license from Sony) the same removable-media drive as the PSP - which would allow it to play all those UMD movies that are released for the PSP...
• It is only slightly "chubbier" than the current generation iPod (video) and the width & length of a paperback book.

Major selling points are that (1) it can play your iTunes collection, (b) it presents video at a higher screen resolution and bit rate than current iTMS video, (3) it will play UMDs, and (4) it has "practical" functions for web, e-mail, notetaking, widgets, etc.

Of course, I doubt we'll see it before the Christmas shopping season, if even that soon, because:
• 802.11n won't be "unofficially" in shipping products before midyear at earliest (could eliminate FrWr400 and/or USB2?), while the "official" standard is a year away.
• There still aren't enough video/TV choices on iTMS and at a better resolution & bit rate.
• Other Apple "digital home" pieces have not materialized as of yet.
• Downloading feature-length content would be painfully slow until broadband evolves further.
• Is there a chip out there (now) that would be strong & fast enough to power this vPod while maintaining good battery life?"
________________________________

Well, with the right "brain" powering it - what's the latest from Intel's purchase of ARM, what, 7 years ago? OLED is key, I think, to conserve some on battery life. Perhaps it could use NAND Flash for the disk, saving on battery life even further. Any large apps or content could come on the UMDs. And if it could hold, say, 10GB of NAND, it may be possible to "shunt" the UMD's contents to RAM, effectively shutting down the UMD drive until needed... Just some thoughts.

I think a device like this could prove very popular on college campuses, with students using the device to take notes in class, listen to their iTunes, maintain a schedule, check up on event info on campus or in the area, watch videos, etc.

I know when I was in college I'd have snapped up one of these in a heartbeat - just as soon as my student loan balance cleared, anywayz.....

 

[SiliconAddict]

Neither Windows nor Mac OS is there yet (windows is closer, in that you can re-size menus etc.) but both Leopard and Vista are expected to have this.

Which basically makes your comment a moot point does it not? All people have to do is struggle 8 month to a year and they will have their Resolution Independent UI. It could be argued that buying a laptop that supports such a high resolution is future proofing yourself to a certain extent.

 

[SiliconAddict]

I have never, and will never see the point of a tablet PC, it's like a notebook only not as good.

Apple would have to do something truly amazing before they could impress me with a tablet.

I've railed against this opinion so many times I should copy the text. Actually I think I will...
*goes looking for his last 3 paragraph post on why Tablet PC's can work if done right.*

REPOST:

A tastefully done Tablet PC convertible (Read: Standard laptop that can convert into a tablet.) I think Apple could make a real winner in that arena. If nothing else the graphics art professionals would drool over having an Apple laptop that they can work in Photoshop right on the screen.
And then there are people like me that do better in meetings with notepads the going clickity, clickity, clickity on a keyboard. Finally I got to use a tablet for a month at work. It was damn hard to give up. Not because of MS’s piss poor attempt at shoe-horning Windows into a tablet roll but from a personalization standpoint. I really got tied to that computer. There is something about interacting with your computer with a pen that seems much more. . .oh I don’t know. Does the term personal make any sense? IMHO the experience made me feel like I was more closely tied to the computing experience and that was with the Windows interface. I know Apple could blow the doors off of what MS is offering.

PC tablets have never taken off for several reasons:

1. Price points are ridiculously high for a tablet device and marginally high for a convertible device that transforms into a tablet.

2. MS forced a dumb*** method of handwriting recog. More specifically NONE. Yes folks. When a note is written in ink it stays in a handwritten form instead of converted over to typed text. You have that option but MS implementation is sloppy to say the least. So how impressed am I supposed to be when I get an e-mail from my insurance broker quoting me a figure and I can’t figure out if that it a $6,000 or a sloppy $5,000. There is a reason why typed text as taken over the world. I not longer have to translate someone’s crappy handwriting. This is where MS fails and where Apple excelled back in 1997! Yah I still own a Newton 2100 and I also own a iPaq 4705 and let me tell you the handwriting recog on the Newton still blows the iPaq away even though the recog software is supposedly based on the software that was on the Newton.

3. Not really MS's fault because they don't make hardware but the integration of the OS into the hardware is sloppy to say the least. Seriously. All MS did was create a package that gets installed on top of an XP install. Hardly tailored to a tablet. They did the same thing they did with their PDA when it first came out (Palm Sized PDA.) They dumped the Windows GUI on a platform that it wasn't designed for. That is partly why Pocket PC 2001 and so forth is more popular. MS did some tweaking to the GUI for the platform. Similarly MS just dumped XP onto the tablet without any forethought about the interface. No thought on how a user works when he or she has their arm draped over half the screen. No thought on how you access your applications or how to interact with them. Nope. Dump and run.

4.MS dipped a toe into the market. Their position? These devices are for the vertical market. That is all well and fine but its hardly going to grow a market if all you are doing is saying that hey! You average consumers don’t want this. This is for the business industry.

'
In typical MS fashion they did everything they could to sabotage the Tablet PC before it even shipped. All of the above Apple could fix, enhance, and well frankly do it right out of the gate. The tablet PC can work. I’ve used one for about a week. The experience feels much more personal then typing on a desktop. The problem with a tablet and something that most people don’t get is that the pure slate will NEVER succeed. Ever. Only the convertible. The laptop that has the display swing back and lay flat against the keyboard. Why? Because as I like to put it handwriting is bandwidth limited when it comes to entering data. In terms of speed it generally follows OCR, speech, typing, handwriting. (I have seen a person type faster then they could talk but those people are super freaks and are not the norm. If Apple could make a convertible tablet that gets 5+ hours of battery life, has a tweaked GUI for the pen, is marketed as a personal computing experience, is less then 1” thick with the screen, and keeps the keyboard they could blow the market wide open.

 

[ozone]

Not. Happening. Ever.

Better back that up iGary. Ever used a tablet? I use one every day. Handwriting capability directly on a PDF maybe just helped a $250,000 research proposal meet a critical deadline. Is it a niche market? Maybe. But that niche includes people who make a LOT of important decisions.

MS did a lot better job with the tablets than most people think. Don't knock it till you try it.

 

[illegalprelude]

Imagine an iPod with an acceleration sensor. It could turn up the volume on your in-car iPod when it feels you accelerate to freeway speed. Or you could start dancing (with your silhouette against a colored wall of course) and let the iPod detect your movements and play matching music!

I love that option, my Mini Cooper / all Mini Coopers have that. The option is amazing, when i speed up, music gets louder, go slower, music comes down and u can adjust how sensative u want it to be

 

[lorenz]

More explanations of sudden motion sensor and few examples like :
AMSVisualizer and StableWindow. (links at bottom)

http://www.kernelthread.com/software/ams/ams.html

 

[guifa]

I would be willing to bet you any amount of money that you are dead wrong.

That'd be a one way bet though. If it happens, you get the money. If it doesn't, you can always claim it could still happen and so thus you could never lose the better, only stalemate it or win 🙂

I'll bet you that anything will happen eventually. Anything, for any amount of money. 🙂

 

[brian24GC]

Smart Phone??

This rumor has been on-going for the last four years when the iWalk hoax surfaced.

Steve actually admitted in an interview at the All Things Digital Conference that Apple did develop a PDA internally, but it never made it to production.

Also, I'm surprised no one has mentioned this Accelerometer being used in a Smart Phone. T-Mobile's soon to be released MDA PocketPC Smart phone is going to have a similar feature so that when you turn it on its side to use the QWERTY keyboard it automatically rotates the screen.

Sorry to bring up the old iPhone rumor, but it makes sense.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Sorry to bring up the old iPhone rumor, but it makes sense.

That's alright...I was thinking the same thing. On the patents, it says "Tablet" quite plainley....too obvious for a company such as apple, who is into secrecy. My guess is that it's for either the next iPods, or an iPhone.

Then, there the far out stretch where Nintendo was supposdly in cahoots with Apple, and the patent is nothing more than for a revolution style remote for the iTelevision (that was rumored days before MWSF)

 

[jouster]

That's alright...I was thinking the same thing. On the patents, it says "Tablet" quite plainly....too obvious for a company such as apple, who is into secrecy.

Not really. You have to use quite precise language on a patent, at least for the specific innovation you want to copy. Using something more general - such as 'computing device' - significantly weakens the likelihood of the patent being granted.

If Apple uses the term 'tablet' then that is exactly what they are trying to protect. Of course there'd have to be some non-trivial difference from current tablets for the patent to be granted.

And, as many have already pointed out, having a patent granted won't necessarily lead to a product appearing.