Apple Patents Tablet Mac (with Photos)

jkheit writes "I wrote a quick news item over at the Mac Observer that might be of interest. Apple patents a tablet Mac. The new photos confirm that this device is a touch-screen Apple tablet. You can see it here."

Comments

Correction. Illustrations not photos.

[jkheit]

Sorry about the misleading title. (A case of fingers before brain) There are illustrations from the patent, not photos. (Perhaps this can be corrected). Anyway, my apologies on that.

Re:Patent?

[TheHonestTruth]

It's a DESIGN patent, not a utility patent. They only have ruights to someone using that design specifically. Design patents are very easy to, pardon the pun, design around. You just have to make some ornamental change. IANADesign Patent Lawyer, so I don't know the legal standard for getting around a design patent, but from what I understand, they are more used in the clothing, accessory, and toy markets to prevent counterfeitting where looks are as improtant as function.

-truth

Patent RSS Feeds

[stikij]

• Apple - RSS
• Microsoft - (RSS)
• Google - (RSS)
• Yahoo! - (RSS)
• IBM - (RSS)

Courtesy of PatentMojo.com

Re:Don't jump to any conclusions

[NickV]

Yea... I see what you're saying. It seems WAAAAY to obvious (and un-Apple like) to just give something that big away in a patent without obfuscating it to hell and back (and a picture of a guy using a tablet is pretty much the opposite of obfusication.)

That patent you refer to was clearly for the iPod clickwheel, but by phrasing all the language and diagrams as a "mouse" with a "rotary dial" you guys totally hid the real nature of the patent until it was released. Mind you, after the iPod mini's release it was pretty obvious that the patent applied to that item.

So what you're saying is the patent is for something unrelated to a tablet... something that , once it comes out, will obviously fit that patent.

You know what I think it is (based on your hints and other things I've read.) A remote for the Airport Express Video (the one with an integrated hardware h.263 encoder and digital video outputs for a TV) that gives you a mini iTunes-y type interface to select tv shows/episodes you bought.

Yea... that sounds like it! It'd be very cool! (and surprising for a company run by a man who I've read hates the TV.)

Re:Using Tiger

[ljaguar]

it screws up the subpixel rendering though. because subpixel rendering (LCD anti-aliasing) depends on horizontal layout of red/green/blue pixels. he anti-aliasing of the font expects the red/green/blue pixel to be aligned in a certain way so draws the font in a certain way. This works fine when it's really aligned that way as expected. But if the screen is rotated 90 degrees, the algorithm screws up.

I tried it. Other people are freaking out because they can't figure out how to revert the screen... You just restart the system preference panel and do it again. I did it and got it back fine.

But like I said, the subpixel rendering problem is there.

Re:They are, check Tiger, it has built in function

[drdink]

From Quartz Composer:

Tablet This patch returns the current state of the tablet pointing device. The pen position is expressed in units in the Quartz Composer coordinates system. The pen tilt on the X and Y axes is normalized to the [-1.0,1.0] range and the pen pressure is normalized to the [0,1] range. Note that this patch does not read the tablet state directly but is dependent on the proper information being passed to the composition. This information may not always be available, depending on the environment in which Quartz Composer is running.

From the ADC Reference Library:

A tablet with a stylus is an input device that generates more accurate and detailed data than does a mouse. It enables a user to draw, write, or make selections on a touch-sensitive surface (the tablet); an application can then capture and process those movements, reflecting them in its user interface. The tablet is generally a USB device connected to a computer system and the stylus is a wireless transducer. The stylus actually can be any pointing device, such as a pen, an airbrush, or even a puck. In addition to the stylus location at any given moment, tablet devices can report many other pieces of data, such as the tilt of a pen, the rotation of a puck, and the pressure applied to the stylus. Pressure is particularly important because, with just this small piece of data, a user can tell an application to vary the thickness of a line being drawn, or its opacity, or its color. Some stylus devices also have buttons that can furnish an application with additional information. Mac OS X supports tablet devices from several manufacturers. Some of these tablets can respond to multiple pointing devices on their surfaces at the same time.

Now, the output parameters that the Tablet patch provides in Quartz Composer are:

• X
• Y
• Tilt X
• Tilt Y
• Pressure
• Tip Button
• Lower Button
• Upper Button

Also worth noting from the ADC Library documentation (for Cocoa) above:

Important: Tablet events are available in Mac OS X v10.4 and later versions of the operating system.

On a similar note, Quartz Composer showed up in Mac OS X 10.4 as well. Note the pictures in the ADC document as well. They depict a tablet connected to an iMac or Apple display. It seems to me that none of this is talking about a tablet PC. If it is, they sure went through a great deal to hide it.

Re:Patent?

[dr.badass]

That is why we have trademarks.

No, actually, it isn't. A trademark is entirely different. For example, a trademark prevents someone from putting your logo on their product, whether it looks like your product or not. A design patent prevents someone from copying the design of your product, no matter what logo they put on it.

It is a dangerous precedent for design elements to be patentable.

Except it isn't a precedent at all -- design patents aren't a recent thing. They were incorporated into patent law in 1842. It seems like they are among the least dangerous parts of current patent law.