Slashdot Mirror
Apple Patents 'Chameleon' Computer Case
Dave B writes "The Register
has been fishing at the patent office again and found that Apple has a new patent for "a computing device [which] includes a housing having an illuminable portion. The computing device also includes a light device disposed inside the housing. The light device is configured to illuminate the illuminable portion".
While this gives us the exciting prospect of an iMac that is all five fruit flavors at once surely the original iMac with its glowing power button, or indeed a-thousand-and-one other electronic gizmos represent prior art?" Update a couple of users noticed this Slashdot Story from 2002 which looks familiar.
What the poster failed to mention was that the patent also included that it was customizable via a software program. You could open the "case prefs" and sets your case to have stripes, polka dots, etc. I am sure it could probably be animated too.
I don't I've ever seen that.
A "glowing power button" does not a "housing having an illuminable portion" make. That is a status indicator. A button, a light serving a unique and specific purpose is not prior art.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
There ...
are
four LIGHTS!!!!!!!!!
It certainly is a patent issue
The term prior art is mainly used in the patent field.
So do you suppose that these internal lights will actually be lasers like the ones found in laser pointers? how else would you be able to make the lights turn into dots or stripes?
Nope, its a patent thing. Patents are about saying "I came up with this idea first", while copyrights are about saying "The blueprints for this particular design are mine".
Making a wind-up radio is liable to fall foul of Trevor Bayliss's patent. Sticking a Freeplay logo on the front will be breaching his copyright.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
if the parent is redundant then the whole article is, don't you think?
No. See here.
Now, I'm not sure how a so-called "interactive illumination" is much different than LEDs you see on the mondo-cool multiprocessor boxes, but the patent does describe something a bit different than the run-of-the-mill case mod.
A machine whose shell changes colour at the user's whim :) - that would be fun than the boring old grey box for sure!
However, I'm not sure how programmable this light device is (The light source is a collection of red, green and blue LEDs, capable of being used to generate any colour entered as an RGB value), but this bit from the article flummoxed me completely:
punters demanding too many blue and red models and too few green and yellow.
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
well, it seems awfully a lot like something apple has about a year ago but this patent award seems fresh(12 august 2004).
maybe it's a refinement of that earlier patent, to actually show a way how to do it(software controllable RGB leds ie. ONE PIXEL MONITOR..)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The funny thing is that this actually IS news. But only because it is Apple. I for one am dying to see what the new iMac will look like. Even people who never plan to buy an Apple product are, at the very least, interested. However, if DELL had filed this patented then no one would really care. That says something about the importance of good design in the computer industry.
(next time I will RTFA)
I did not know mother Nature is this sloppy when it comes to patents. I thought the Chameleon would have been patented already.
When you can have blinky lights!
I guess it now make sense to call them iLamps ! Damn it was my favorite joke.
Someone should put together a "patent creation website". Take 3 things, put them together randomly and submit them as a patent.
In this example... case mode, interface card, software.
The guy who invented that fussbal table connected to the net should patent that.
patents protect a specific implementation. you can't patent the idea of putting a light in a box, you patent how you do it.
Gimme my 699$ or suffer the litigatious consequnceses.
-- "I'm not a religious man, but if you're up there, save me Superman..."
Peecee world/user response:
...
1) Ridicule
2) Ripoff
OS X
iMac
iPod
This (or a very similar Apple patent) cropped up about a year or two ago. It was discussed then. Some people freaked out, some people used it as an opportunity to give Apple a blowjob, some people didn't care. I guess nothing changes.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
If the lights can be controlled by software (and I'm assuming it'd work in the same principle of one of the old Lite Brite toys), It'd be intersting to see whether any viruses could exploit this feature. I can just see a row of Apple computers with goatsex glowing on the side of them....
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
Just what I need a computer that hides from me by becoming the same colour as the desk.
I wonder how this does for their Karmakarmakarmakarmakarma ChameEEEeleon Appologies to Boy George...
Patents are about saying "I came up with this idea first" ... and no one else can use it for the next 20 years now even if they come up with it independently so nyah! Free Markets? NEVER!
There's a reason why it's brilliant. It was stolen directly from Orwell's 1984. I know this because I re-read the book recently. See the beginning part of this page for confirmation. (I claim no responsibility for the rest of that page's content, because I didn't even read it!)
In any case, if Star Trek didn't give Orwell credit, that's pretty sad, since the premises of the two stories are so blatantly similar!
(This thread is sort of off-topic, so karma bonus has been turned off)
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Apple have some serious problems if a glowing case is a killer feature. I heard that their desktop PC market is starting to slide, and that really the smart thing to do would be to concentrate on consumer electronics, ie. iPod, but this is *ridiculous*
No matter how good the case looks, if the machine isn't up to spec, who will buy it? This whole thing just smacks of desperation.
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
Is it like this?
Surely there is a computer inside that controls that case!
)9TSS
Sticking a Freeplay logo on the front will be breaching his copyright. ITYM breach his trademark.
Because there is no Score: 0 Retard?
I can't find a url now, but I'm pretty sure Apple patented some kind of computer casing that changes lighting depending on software events. This was at least a year ago. Is this the same thing or something new?
...and another Apple fanboy heard from.
If it were Microsoft (excuse me, Micr0$0ft), you'd be all over them.
I don't know about "Lasers". You might open the case and shoot your eye out.
Evolution or ID?
No.
The register should probably read slashdot more often then...
This story was posted on slashdot two years ago
Apple has a new patent for "a computing device...
LOL. Slashdot and obviously the Register don't seem to be able to determine what a patent is. THIS IS AN APPLICATION, not an actual patent.
It was filed in Feb 2004 and PUBLISHED, not GRANTED on Aug 12. 20040156192 is the application number, not the patent number. Patent numbers are serial and are in the 6 million range.
Talk about egg on face.
<A HREF =" http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/5da2/" > This </a> seems to be the best canidate for prior art.
My UID is prime is yours?
You mean, changeable colors on your case, like a Wurlitzer Jukebox from 1934?
Our next major economic dowfall will be Intellectual Property related. The US consumer base will become fed up with exclusives, restrictions and pay-per-exhibit models of content & products. We will see people forming newsworthy general boycotts of things. Only then will legislation begin to really take notice of consumer fancy.
I have, sort of.. It's called the Ambient Orb. There are some variations between the ideas, however.
Yeah I heard about this a while back in a Mag here in the UK, they also talked about a mouse with an iPod style wheel.
..but I'll stick with my PC thanks :p
Apparently the lighting can be set to change when different events happen, you could make it glow red when you receive a new e-mail etc..
- Ä Delta
I already have a housing with an illuminatable region which can display patterns of colours under software control, and it is not any fancy thing-geek harware either. I call it a *monitor*.
The only way this patent differs is that the housing contains the computing device. A bit like an iMac in fact.
Next,they'll patent the air inside for the smell of a Mac.How about the electricity that runs it.Hell how about the earth that provides the gravity to keep it in place?
Makes you wonder what life would be like if commodore or atari had won the old home computer war.smells like macintosh indeed.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
ACHTUNG! Alles touristen und non-technischen peepers!
Das machine control is nicht fur gerfinger-poken und mittengrabben. Oderwise is easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowen fuse, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken.
Der machine is diggen by experten only. Is nicht fur geverken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseenen keepen das cotten picken hands in das pockets, so relaxen und watchen das blinkenlights.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
Those of us who rackmount all their computers won't be impressed. Nor will the blind.
'Just another useless feature to raise cost.
Apple is a design leader, and there's a portion of the PC hardware industry that watches Apple designs and makes knock-offs on the PC side.
The question with patents is always: if this patent were not granted, would companies still have the incentive to innovate in this area with the same intensity? To the extent that this patent is original and non-obvious, I think the answer here is that the patent is justified. Apple has proven that they can innovate in this area, and they should be rewarded for this.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Guess one can never get enough of "waah! but what if someone had patented sex!" kind of fallacies on /. Was starting to get withdrawal syndromes after through a whole weekend without reading one ;)
But OK, let's play that game. Let's talk about paintings:
1. They'd more likely have to patent a device or method to make those paintings. So someone might have got a patent on something new like flinging colours at the canvas, but then someone else might just as well get the same result (or close enough) by using the old methods (using a brush). For which plenty of prior art existed.
(Just as this patent doesn't prevent you from having a lit case by other means than what Apple patented. You can still have your old cathodes or LED fans.)
2. For that matter, it might have stimulated someone to try more new stuff. So we might have 3-4 times more styles in the same period. Which is the whole purpose of patents: to stimulate researching _and_ publishing your research.
(And you could say the same about the situation at hand. We've had _years_ of noone even trying something more original than yet another LED fan or cathode behind acrylic window. By now every kiddie has one of those. So if it takes patents to get out of that loop and have a more original case, seems to me like a benefit of patents.)
3. Patents are not for ever. Copyrights amd trademarks do get extended. Patents expire no matter what.
I.e., if you talk about a 100 years interval, you may notice how the 20 years covered by a patent is only a fifth of it. I.e., combined with the previous point, we'd probably have a helluva lot more art choices after 100 years.
4. Patents encourage publishing your results, as opposed to keeping everything super-secret. Art is a bad example there. But there are a ton of technological processes that one could have kept secret. Or which _are_ being kept secret. Patents encourage companies to share this information with the rest of the world instead.
5. Patents get licensed all the time. I'm sure that if someone absolutely needed to do something impressionistic before the patent expired, they could have negotiated a license.
(And in this case, if IBM or MS absolutely needed to do their own lit cases, I'm sure they can persuade Apple.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Unfotunately, if you hooked up the chameleon to change colour accoring to computer status, the only colour it would turn is black...Mind you, there would also be some really neat audio feedback as well
Specialisation is for insects
Come on man, companies patent everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING, to protect themselves, so that if someone decides to rip off their cool method for software customization of lighting in a case, they have some way to bring them to court, or at least get some payback.
I don't know if it's really a good thing, but that's just standard practice among companies these days.
...the Apple Fanboy Verbal Contorsion Decathlon!
Let the games begin.
Nobody sees where this is going, do you?
Your chameleon case?
there should be a 'Wrong' modifier for when its an obviously incorrect message...
Flamebait is not me posting something that you, the moderator, disagree with. It is posting something deliberately designed to attract flaming ... flame... bait. See how that works?
So for example, if I were to say, "you are a fucktard Apple fanboy who thinks that a woman is more interested in the inches of your Powerbook than the inches in your pants", THAT would be '-1 flamebait' territory. On the other hand, if I were to assert that Apple does not deserve mindless adulation and any company that comes up with a good idea should be praised, be they Apple or Dell or whoever, that would be an OPINION THAT DIFFERS FROM YOURS and I should be allowed to express it here.
MODERATION IS NOT DESIGNED TO LET YOU ENFORCE YOUR VIEWS ON OTHERS. It is designed to maintain a decent standard of conversation here. You are contributing to a pathetic cooperative censorship operation by Apple devotees that routinely obliterates any post that does not praise Apple.
Did it occur to you (a) that noone has flamed my post prior to your helpful censoring of its harmful content or (b) that someone else had already modded it up as 'insightful'? Maybe, just maybe, you are wrong. Think about it, please.
Seriously, fuck you.
Read Pynchon.
WTF. This is nothing more than getting a patent on a funny / cool modded case. They must be ***** kidding!
Privacy is terrorism.
Ambient Orb. Your Mac would likely turn red when the stock market dives or when the National Weather Service has a warning in your area.
Programmable? It'd better be. I know that I'd likely pull apart a new Mac to figure out how to change the lights as I see fit.
There will probably be a Dashboard widget to control the lights or set a source like (NYSE or NWS) to change the lights according to those trends.
"The light source is a collection of red, green and blue LEDs, capable of being used to generate any colour entered as an RGB value."
"Illuminated portion"
So if you consider the monitor to be part of the case, or indeed, the computer (or an embedded display).... well taking it in a wider context. If the case can be set to change colour evenly, from a simple progam running in the OS, this is quite cool.
The computer could even auto configure a taseful colour to match your curtains (or whatever you point your webcam at...)
Apple are pushing things that others don't see as important, and this will give them an edge.
My girlfriend said out of the blue "When we buy a new PC, should we get an Apple?" (We had jsut passed an old (closed down) computer shop, that had a large Apple logo on the side...
girlfriend ( P ) Pronunciation Key (gûrlfrnd)
n.
1. A favored female companion or sweetheart.
2. A female friend.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
gives us the exciting prospect of an iMac that is all five fruit flavors at once
You mean White?
In the late 90's a company named "Color Kinetics" was granted a patent on making arbitrary colors by mixing R, G, and B sources. Since then they've gone around driving other companies out of the business.
Isn't one of the disqualifiers for a patent being awarded when an idea is too obvious?
I think patents should REALLY be re-examined for some of this. (I am sure people agree on that point) The invention of the wheel is a great and patentable idea. I don't think it's great and patentable to put a wheel on anything to make it mobile!
Making a scheme of colored lights to create an effect or mood is patentable. But putting lights on a case should not be. It's just taking existing stuff and using it. It's not a new technology. It's the application of existing technology. I don't think that should be patentable.
Yes, I realize what I am saying qould probably disqualigy about 80% of all the most recent patents. Damnit! It should! Software patents most of all should be disqualified for that reason. There just aren't all that many pentable software ideas out there.
Of COURSE these are just my opinions and I wish I could be a patent decision-making guy. But just like other things (like the katie.com thing) voicing opinions on Slashdot can make a difference. People *ARE* reading.
Agreed. Redundant and overrated are pretty much used that way though.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I wonder if this means that Apple will implement the same glowing keys feature that is present in the 15" and 17" Powerbooks on their desktop models. That's a great feature for allowing the use of a computer in the dark. In this case, the whole computer can light up when the lights go down. Great for getting that "computer tan".
Patent issues aside, I like the sound of this feature. Xserves are already pretty nice for 'admin by eye', but this sort of design takes that to a new level.
I've got new mail. How do I know? The Mac's pulsating yellow. Device 3 on that RAID's getting sick - it's turned a nasty shade of puce. We need to tweak our load-balancing: that server's green, but that one's red.
Shit. They've all gone red. Start blocking links from slashdot.
"ITYM breach his trademark"
D'oh! You're right, of course. Breaching his copyright would be using an identical form factor without the logo.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
This is Slashdot. All patents are bad. Except for when Apple gets them. Or IBM uses them in a Courtroom against SCO. Those are all good patents.
Disclaimer: I love my iPod.
By using a built in camera to scan its vicinity and match the skin's casing to its environment the computer (or anything else for that matter) could be made to vanish. If a thief breaks in, he or she would find it a lot harder to find!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
nt
I has lights inside, and internal veiwables, fans and other 'blinky' stuff! USPTO here I come3!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
You people are forgetting Slashdot Rule #1:
When Microsoft patents something, it's BAD
When Apple does *anything*, it's GOOD
Best Buy can have you arrested
...glow red when it is getting an online update?
last time I checked, my VW GTi is a computing device and has tons of internal LEDs illuminating portions of it's shell (red and blue LED dashboard, green turn signals)
I guess VW just trumped the patent with prior art, and probably 3-4 other car makers
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
as is the case with most any newclear powered planet/population rescue initiative.
.com(s) (froogles) away from some disabled person? that's more like nazi storm troopers, than internet 'community' members/examples?
see you there?
from another storIE:
blogs with little/no stuff that matters (Score:mynuts won, no 'shares'/monIE/'futures' for those sots)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 16, @10:27AM (#9980169)
not to mention the fauxking PostBlock devise.
what about those googlers trying to steal the
tell 'em robbIE? don't save everything for the interview/deposition.
all is not lost.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... moving parts, & everything else, since/until forever. see you there?
Since the light source is RGB LEDs, how much power is needed to make a compelling case? Moreover, I imagine it's hard to illuminate uniformly a portion of the case, especially a large portion that needs several LEDs to do so.
Many people pointed out that this could be used for the iPod, but it will cut down the power supply life/charge. Is the coolness factor worth losing a few hours of battery life? Not to mention that people put their iPods in their pockets or a case.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but doesn't this sound exactly like a backlight keyboard? As in, this is old news... but the speculation that other members have had abotu software customizable external graphics on their boxen sounds sweet.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
I could see a sysadmin type writing a tiny bit of code make their case glow red when getting slashdotted, predicting the weather like the Ambient beacon (link above), etc. I think Ambient is a very cool company and I'd like to see their design principles ripple outward into other companies' products.
slashsearch.org - slashdot search. powered by google.
Doesn't the Aduki lamp do just this.
First link from google.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And as mentioned, this is a published application not an issued patent. I love that the Reg uses "finally" in describing the "granting" of the patent. A typical prosecution time is a couple years, not a couple months. Having a patent granted in 7 months would kick ass. But again, this is just an application.
And for those crying "prior art!" note that the application claims priority back to 2001. I dunno what case modders were doing three years ago, or if the glowing orb thing on thinkgeek was around, but it makes your prior art case harder (though still not that weak of course).
-truth
PS if everything is so obvious, why haven't you patented it? People here are like Nostradamus fans: everything is obvious (predictions are accurate) after the fact.
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
Yeah, because the iMac has always had the best hardware available in it.
Did I mention that many of the statistical people that monitor such things have said it (the iMac) is the best selling computer of all time? Perhaps style matters more than how many billion times per second it can process a NOP while you are reading Slashdot.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It should be pretty easy to change it to do full colour for each pixel, if it wasnt for the expense of the LEDs to do that.
A small movie shows a sample scrolling message displaying on it http://sucs.org/~arthur/blinken.mqv
The idea of a mood ring isn't too far off from the actual implementation. Heat sensitive liquid crystals would react to your body heat and change color (and sometimes pattern in some rings). They'd say various colors equated to different moods e.g. green = normal body temp = calm, yellow = hot = stressed, red = very hot = horny.
There are many ways color could be put to use.
In a computer lab situation, all students are taking a quiz. The color reflects the student's "questions per second" rate of progress through the quiz. Blue = Quick Pace, Green = Average Pace, Red = Slow Pace. (or any sort of gradients between these). Blue might be indicative of a really sharp student or one who's cheating. Red might indicate a dumb student or one held up by technical problem.
Again in a school lab, but where the students are given free research time to roam the web. The case may show green for sites on an approved "white list", some form of amber on an off-site list based on a computed content rating, a red color for black listed sites or ones with highly offensive content rating.
A boot up progress bar? As the machine starts up the colors fill the neutral body color from grey to blue from bottom to top and the whole case seems like it's being filled with water as it indicates where it is in the boot process. (Aqua?)
A mode (initiated from the server) that would turn all the machines cases to indicate 802.11 signal strength for a period of 10 seconds. Allowing you to adjust the base station's antenna or position to give good signal strength to everyone in the room.
An accessibility feature for deaf users (or an option for computers in mute) to strobe to the would-be sound strength being generated by the computer with color indicative of volume. While you won't be able to make out the content of what's being said, you could distinguish between a system beep when played over the sound of your game of risk. All without interfering with the real screen's content area.
Any other thoughts?
Now everyone can have a laptop that outwardly reflects the level of threat from terrorists - possibly deterring future attacks!
What a great target for the evil virus/worms writers. Maybe this will get some people to start writing some stuff to target the software controls for the 'case color'. Make the case strobe in weird colors or randomly change the colors at random times.
The number given 20040156192, and I KNOW the number of patents granted is increasing greatly, BUT ... My name is on US Patent 5,982,862 issued 1999, and I'd be VERY surprised if 20,034,173,330 (over twenty BILLION (US billion, 10^9) patents have been issued since then.
I think I see, it's parsed as the year 2004, then the number issued in that year, 0156192. Thus the USPTO has issued a little more than 156,000 patents so far this year. Using this numbering, there can only be 10 million patents issued per year.
But I digress. Back to commenting on the original story:
With patents like this being issued, this patent numbering system can't last much longer than a decade, if that.
Tag lost or not installed.
Every time I get mod points I make it a point to mod down the Apple Fan-Boys. Don't swim against the current! Climb out and run along the bank when nobody is looking...
Blar.
they're for implementations.
Bell didn't get a patent for the idea of a telephone - people had been trying to make telephones for decades. He got the patent for a working implementation of a telephone.
This is what makes all those "Hey, I saw that idea 20 years ago in a Bond movie" posts so laughable. Da Vinci drew sketches of aircraft hundreds of years ago. That didn't stop the Wright brothers from patenting their designs.
Clear, Dark Skies
> 3. Patents are not for ever. Copyrights amd trademarks do get extended. Patents expire no matter what.
Yes, but in the software world, 20 years is just about forever.
If I had a patent on the idea of using software to write data to a CD, then no one could do this without my permission. CDs would not be used unless I cut big deals with the big companies...and then, you know what? Linux couldn't write to CDs because no one would pay the licensing fee.
There have been soooo many blindingly stupid patents issued in the computer world.
This one at least is on a physical process, but I think it's still rather broad - it's like having a patent on painting your box purple. Bit too much. If they patent just their method (using these lights in this way), I wouldn't mind.
--LWM
This looks to me like it's going to be a design patent when it's approved (you can tell these at a glance by the prefix D on the number,) which is a very specific sort of patent and very different from what you may normally think of in terms of patents.
A design patent protects a particular aesthetic or functional design, not any process or underlying technology.
So, it's quite reasonable that Apple would get a design patent, I'm sure they have a great many of them already. Design patents are also not particularly strong- all you have to do to get around it is make a significant alteration and you're generally all right.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Actually, there is a patent class for the design of a device, this is used to patent faucet designs, doorknobs, vases, etc.
The blueprint for something may be copyrighted, but that just means I can't run off a copy of the blueprint without infringing. However, I can (or at least used to, it seems every year copyrights become stronger and stronger and cover things they were never intended to) fire up autocad and design something that looks like it without having to worry about copyright.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Alienware has some of this crazy lighting into the cooling system.
Full well knowing that the prior art is there, and the fact that Apple would patent this idea shows that they are not above trying to lock competition out of innovation. My car stereo can do this, change lcd colors, movable animated images on the screen, buttons that can have colors changed from a program. Yes it does include the ability to control it from software, but that still doesn't mean they can not use this patent to control the ability to sell modified cases for Macs. Case mods are popular in the PC world, well now it will be popular for Macs, with Apple being the only person legal to sell the mods. Way to go Apple, what are you going to do to lock your customers, and competitors out of the game next?
TruePunk | Games
Think mainframes, with their massive arrays of blinkenlights.
In particular, the Burroughs B6700 (and similar models, although the B6700 I have hands-on experience with) had a large rectangular array of lights on one panel of the case, (12x16 I think, for the top two double words (48 bit words) of its stack) that by default displayed the Burroughs "B" logo during idle time but could also be (and was) configured to display different patterns, text, and animation (although it took some creative hacking).
-- Alastair
Whenever the feds bust in, the computer can blend in with the background and hide itself.
If this simply involves project a few colours onto parts of the case, it might have short-term appeal.
But if it could project an image onto the case, it would be much more interesting! It could even project the screen contents onto the back of the case (Note to self: careful where you view that monkey porn!)
Either way.. it could potentially be useful. If you were a lab admin with a lot of Macs, you could have each set up to glow red when infected with a virus, blue if the network connection goes down etc.
If Apple released a G5 iMac that had this feature and an upgradable video card and one PCI slot I would buy it in a heartbeat.
While Apples all in ones have made them a bundle of cash they need to look forward and offer at least some upgrade potential to the machines. At least an upgrade to the video card and one PCI slot for expansion. Even with the cool color changing feature I would not buy another Mac that could not have the video card updated and at least one PCI slot.
tell me how this improves a PC in any way...
if the user has more concern over how the pc looks, then how the pc performs, they don't need to be using a pc, they need to get back to their Barby Doll dress up kits...
ACK! Where did my computer go!?
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
Slashdot....
......??????
:)
Apple = good
Patent = bad
Surely this is a logical paradox and this topic should have 0 posts?
or have some posters here got paradox absorbing crumple zones?
the above post is a troll...
there were never any yellow or pink iMacs. if he worked at the Apple store like he claims to have done... then he would have known this.
Seems to fall nicely into the same catagory as the posting.
Not to mention multicolor leds have been used in quite a few peices of hardware in a similar way (read, write, off, on, syscheck) that would sound like prior art to me!
an enemy of my enemy is a friend
"The color-configurable cluster uses six light-emitting diode (LED) lights that are selectable in order from green, blue, purple, white, orange and red. The technology allows customers to blend the primary colors to create more personalized backgrounds."
"The LEDs are filtered through innovative "light-pipe" fittings on the sides of the speedometer, tachometer and vehicle operation indicator panel to create the numerous color options."
By that logic, patents on LCD screens would be invalid because of the same 'prior art' - they too are RGB illumination devices / surfaces and can be controlled by software.
The original bebox had these cool CPU-Meter led strips on the front: one for each of the two CPUs. The more the CPU's were in use, the higher they lit. They were so cool.
...the most gaudy beowulf cluster ever!
The Cobalt Qube had a panel that was illuminated by green/(red?)/off LEDs at both ends. Their changing state tracked the IPL and the bar was solid green when the system was up and running.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yeah ... As the article so rightly points out there is prior art in nature as the chameleon. How can you patent something that exists already in nature?
um, i may be mistaken, but this description sounds awfully similar to the backlit keyboards on the newest line of powerbooks.
~~~ They call me Little John, but don't let the name fool you...in real life I'm very big.
I'm sure the Mac worshippers are all atwitter over this, but seriously, WHO CARES WHAT THE FRIGGIN' CASE LOOKS LIKE?
And please don't mod this as flamebait. I'd really like some answers to this question.
Flamebait?
It's a joke you pompous cocktards - AND a futurama reference..... HELLO?
Some of the mods here re-define clueless.
And this advanced the field of computer devices exactly how?!
On what merits is this patent granted? Because is so novel to put lightbulbs and some logic to access them *in* a computer case?
And this is not even Software Patent. Now we are starting to see trivial patents involving "forced of nature".
What will be the next great new "advancement"?
o A microphone in a pen?
o A paperclip on a monitor for notes?
o A device with four wheels (oh wait, there's prior art)?
o A calculator on your waterbottle?
o Feel free to come up with more examples...
But wait, I'm giving people ideas (at least the prior art would be document right here).
This has got to stop! There is no innovation here, just pure greed to get a lock on a piece of the market by abusing the current laws and relying on a utterly incompetent Patent Office.
(Sorry for the rant)
If hey incorporate RGB lighting inside the cases, it would allow users to make their CPU any color they want. Retailers had to keep five different SKU's for the different iMac colors. This was terribly inefficient; especially considering the only difference between the items was their plastic shell. Eliminating this issue may not only save time and money, but also help prevent the product shortages Apple is famous for.
"The Arglebargle virus takes control of the case lighting control software and locks the system into cycling between the colors 'Pepto-Bismol pink', 'institutional pea-green' and '1985 IBM PC/AT beige/grey'." - From a future CERT advisory.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I didn't see the submission date but the PC case modders have been doing this for years. Including writing drivers to control the colors via software.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
Does this mean we are going to get adware pop-ups on our cases as well as our screens?
This is a pretty trivial thing. Sure, Apple wants to make their computers stand out, and they were a bit inventive when thinking of this. But it could be a useful tool for heaps of computers. Why not just limit the patent to 5 years, so Apple can say "we had it first" and everyone can use it after it's been embedded in the market as an apple feature?
Methinks the Ambient Orb might have a chance at being prior art. It contains electronics and the case (a frosted glass globe) changes color using LEDs inside.
Whether or not the electronics count as a "computing device" remains to be seen, but if the Ambient Orb people have a patent than Apple might be infringing on it.
And dreck like this gets modded as 'funny'.
If I read this right, then this may be the way that I can being back the rainbow colors to my Mac's apple logo!
The other use is that I could change the color to match the graphite, cheap silver paint or beige of the Intel/AMD machines for a little stealth work and sneak my Mac past the IT trolls.
Whee, time for some Hollywood-style computing, baby!
see what happens when you give MACcies mod points: scientologistlike censorship of the views of outsiders.
Mac is a bad cult and you should kidnap any relatives you have with one.destroy the machine and send your loved one out for months of deprogramming.
just read the above post modded down to troll instead of up to insightful.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
> why do we have to slap 20+ years
> of protection (read: prohibition) on it?
Don't forget: publicly funded protection.
Actually I do have a gadget with lights controled by software. It's called a "screen". If you don't think about these as lights, then think about those really big ones in the streets. Probably someone already did this lighting control already in the sixties, or perhaps in the fifties.
Come to think about it, the same thing is done with office buildings: software conrols the light in offices at night-time, creating text and pictures of light usinf office windows. Another one I know of was an arra of lights that people could light up by sending SMS to a certain number (each SMS lighting one lamp and also contributing to charity, until the whole picture is lit).
this rumor was part of the reason for a fake iMac commercial I created over a year ago...
http://www.gomotron.com/imac.html/
and the flashing word STOLEN
when you enter the wrong password more than 5 or 10 times... How embarassing!