Steve Jobs Patents "The Dock"

theodp writes "If you're a PC, you may be unfamiliar with The Dock, the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of a Mac and provides easy access to Apple applications. But don't count on it becoming a standard on the PC. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Apple — and inventor Steve Jobs — a patent for their User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access, aka 'The Dock,' after a rather lengthy nine-year wait."

Comments

CDE?

[goaliemn]

you have to be kidding.. CDE has had this for years, if not decades..

Re:CDE?

[mollymoo]

Don't PCs already have a dock? "The bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of a Mac and provides easy access to Apple applications."

The sounds like a description of the start menu, and its corresponding bar.

Yes it does. There are bazillions of patents with similar names because they cover similar subjects. With only a brief description of a patent it's impossible to know whether it is indeed novel. Fortunately, patents are more than a brief description. The Dock patent does into great detail covering the magnification feature. It's easy to trash a patent by looking at the title and saying "it's been done before". But when you actually read it, it becomes a bit less obvious the novel things the patent claims have actually been done before. Does Claim 120 ring any bells?:

120. The method of claim 117 wherein each icon is displayed within a corresponding tile area having two opposite edges that are respectively located at distances d.sub.1 and d.sub.2 from said cursor, and said other icons are magnified by the factor 1+(d.sub.2'-d.sub.1')/(d.sub.2-d.sub.1), where: d.sub.1=S.times.sine(.pi./2.times.d.sub.1/W) and d.sub.2'=S.times.sine(.pi./2.times.d.sub.2/W), where W is equal to said defined distance, and (S=((H-h)/2)/sine(.pi..times.(h/2)/(W.times.2)), where H is a magnified size for one dimension of said one icon, and h is a default display size for said one dimension.

That's some details of how that nice "hump" is generated when you use the magnification feature. Had you seen specifically that before 1999?