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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.
if the parent is redundant then the whole article is, don't you think?
That line refers to problems they had back with some of the older school Rev. C imacs, when they had five different colors to choose from, but a couple colors sold much better than the rest. Apple wanted to sell the machines to retailers in groups of five, one of each color, but the retailers didn't want to be left over with colors that were harder to sell. Apple initially claimed that they wanted retailers to stock all the colors, because they wanted consumers to decide which ones would be the best sellers, not the store management. I don't know if they ever did end up selling them individually. If not, than that was dumb.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
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."
> 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