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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.
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?"
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.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
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.
I guess it now make sense to call them iLamps ! Damn it was my favorite joke.
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..."
It's a reference to the original fruit flavored iMacs; Apple had trouble keeping the stock numbers right due to varied demand for the five colors; Blueberry sold much better than Tangerine for instance. This was a problem because Apple demanded their resellers stock equal amounts of all five colors.
This dispute led some resellers (notably Best Buy) to stop selling iMacs.
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.
Just what I need a computer that hides from me by becoming the same colour as the desk.
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.
I don't know about "Lasers". You might open the case and shoot your eye out.
Evolution or ID?
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.
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.
Well, considering that Mac sales are up 14%, I hardly call that a 'slide', but I'll give you that one because I'm just feeling nice. In any case:
This is unlikely to be the killer feature of the new iMac - it's not as if Apple's released a massive press release about it - but is another example of how Apple value new and innovative design. Consider the previous two designs of the iMac - the first, the all-in-one CRT model, sold well because of its case. Never mind the specs inside (which weren't top of the range, admittedly, but were and still are sufficient), it sold like hot cakes because of the case.
Same with the 'new'-style flat-panel iMac - after the adverts started showing, all that people seemed to be talking about the next day was that strange, yet undeniably cool lamp-shaped device.
Apple's current range of machines is all very desirable, and I'm sure the new iMac (which WILL contain a G5 - high enough spec?) will be just as, if not more so. But even if it weren't, you could guarentee that people would buy it if it looked good.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
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
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
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.
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.
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.
How the hell did you get from "Apple patents illuminated case" to "Apple's marketing and engineering strategy revolves entirely around illuminated cases"? One of Apple's engineers had a good idea and they want to be able to use it in future products without having it immediately ripped off like so many other things in the past.
Also, Apple isn't going to give up on the desktop anytime soon. The iPod may beat it in growth and units sold, but computers still provide far more revenue in absolute terms.
Well, yeah. Water goes in, steam comes out, it's the submarine. That's obvious.
But how do you prevent the hot steam from raising the ambient temperature of the sub and killing everybody inside?
Through innovative cooling techniques that are not immediately obvious, that take a lot of thought, testing and research.
This is why patents are for SPECIFIC implementations. If Apple had just tried to patent coloured lights on cases, they'd have had no enforceable patent there. So they patented coloured lights, a system to get the light to the outside of the case, creating patterns, and software to control all this. Anybody who thinks a green neon tube is prior art for alternating coloured tiger stripes down the side of a case has a pretty imaginative definition of "non obvious."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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...
Water goes in, steam comes out, it's the submarine. That's obvious. But how do you prevent the hot steam from raising the ambient temperature of the sub and killing everybody inside? [...] This is why patents are for SPECIFIC implementations.
I think it's clear that you haven't read the book. It's really a great read, well worth the entrance fee, so even if you don't care about patent abuse I highly recommend it. Seriously: I think everyone should read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman at least once... it's one of those books I go back to over and over again.
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.
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?
Slashdot Rule #2:
Never step back and use common sense.
Microsoft is a company that uses its monopoly to bully around competition and stifle competition. They've given us buggy software, a shitty OS, and bloatware.
Apple is a bit of an underdog that has brought us OS X, the iPod, the iTMS, etc.
Although Apple has done some things in the past that are pretty ruthless, they still don't compare to the shit that MS has done, and will do again.
So yes, in comparison to the Goliath that is MS, Apple is a good company that produces innovative and sleek products. If Apple's recent trackrecord is any indication, announcements like this GENERALLY mean that there's something cool on the way, not "well, this patent is going to be used to fuck the user or competition."
It is not a patent! This is a published patent application which use the format YYYY#######. Thus this is the 156,192th patent application to be published in the year 2004. Granted patent numbers are (mostly) sequential and they are somewhere around 6,750,000 right now.
The register didn't bother to do any research before green lighting this story.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
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
Whenever the feds bust in, the computer can blend in with the background and hide itself.
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.
Along the way, someone at Apple came up with this. They patented it, because it was their original idea. The patent application was recorded and posted on Slashdot, because some reader was interested.
So explain to me again your theory about desperation?
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That's quite a stretch of the imagination . . .
but a car is not a computing device - it's primary function is driving
Regardless, the description beyond that isn't even remotely close.
Headlamps and illuminated dashboards != LED-lit computer housing