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Apple Receives Patent For Accessing Sets of Apps With Different Passcodes
wabrandsma writes, quoting Apple Insider "The technology, detailed in a patent awarded to Apple on Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, deals with so-called 'access inputs' that determine what apps, device services, and functions can be accessed by a user. Apple's U.S. Patent No. 8,528,072 for a 'Method, apparatus and system for access mode control of a device,' describes a system that creates user access modes guarded by predetermined gesture inputs."
Reading the patent, it appears Apple managed to patent allowing access to some programs without a passcode from the lock screen of a device while protecting others, so e.g. you can quickly swipe to make a phone call or control your music, but have to enter a code to read your email or access your word processor documents.
I'll get a patent for posting on an Apple story.
then y'all will be screwed!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yet another trivial and redundant patent...
So basically they re-invented having different accounts having access to different apps. Only its on a mobile device, and it deserves a patent?!
Absolutely astonishing proof of innovation, no one, other than Apple, could come up with this. Brilliant!
Constantly protecting and promoting innovation! Why, without patents, there's no way Apple would be going out on a limb to develop such advanced technology as needing one type of access method for some functionality and another type of access method for others! And if anyone should dare to steal this brilliant idea, or to develop the same exact one by accident because it is bleeding obvious, then let them be sued into oblivion for unfair whatevery. This will surely help us consumers by giving us less choice and higher prices.
Is this really any conceptually different than different privileges for different accounts? Or account exclusion on different tables in a database?
It would also seem to just be moving the privileged chain to another level from UN/PW to current user/passcode.
My Android smartphone has my employer's email available via Touchdown's sandbox and to access it, you need a separate password (which works great as I can hand my phone to my 10 year old and let him play games with it, but not violate any rules about other people accessing my email.)
Remember kids...folder passwords are Apple's idea.
Prevent Any Tangible Evidence of New Thought
or maybe
Penetrate Anally To Ensure No Talent
I don't know, just spitballing here. Any takers?
The G
News flash, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, HTC, Google, and others apply for and receive patents for literally THOUSANDS of concepts every year. It really isn't news-worthy. Sorry. Let me know when they (and I don't just mean Apple - I mean anyone) actually IMPLEMENTS the patent or decides to otherwise use the patent. Otherwise, it amounts to "company came up with an idea that the lawyers were able to write up into a patent so they did as lawyers do and patented it".
So entirely NOT newsworthy.
THOUSANDS of patents, each company, every year.
Business as usual.
On Android, I have a lockscreen widget and the camera app is accessible without unlocking.
Mobile and cloud computing present special challenges. Google is a particular problem for me. Consider chromebook. I have one password, my google password, and that logs me into the computer but it also gets my e-mail, and my google wallet. Anyone can remotely access my google docs if they have my password. Even worse is that I use my google mail account for all my banking and purchases (amazon) and other sites. So anyone who gets in can do a password reset on those, which will send the new password to the google mail account, and I'm destroyed.
So what about two facto ID. Well this is where mobile compounds things. Usually your mobile device is your second factor. So your mobile device not only can access your gmail but it gets sent the 2nd factor as a text message. So if you loose your phone there's no benefit for two factor ID. If you toss last-pass or some pasword wallet into the mix, again losing the phone can be your undoing.
What I try to do to ameliorate this is to maintain a separate password recovery e-mail account that is not hooked to the phone. But that really doesn't work. most sites don't have the ability to have regular e-mails sent to one e-mail address but password recovery go to another. For example, you probably want to get all yout paypal receipt or amazon receipts sent to your regular e-mail so you will see them immediately if there is activity. So there's no way to do that if you also want the password rest e-mail to go to an off-mobile-device account. Likewise Sites that want two-factor ID don't have the facility to prevent the mobile device from playing the role of both factors (password input device and 2nd factor generator).
Thus there is a lot of room for innovation in the cloud and mobile arena. Segregating authority and access in a more fine grained way is the path forward. Apple is pushing the ball here. It's not a complete solution yet.
I suspect what apple is doing is trying to breakdown the inconvenience of entering a password. right now we have one gate to the castle. Once you are in you have the run of kingdom. So that gate has to be secure, and therfore inconvenient. It would be nice to be able to trade weaker levels of security for convenient access to some applications. that would make it easeir to have some security, not all or nothing. so for example, perhaps my message notifications could be guarded with a gesture whereas my e-mail is secured more tightly.
if they could extend that so that some senders messages were secured even more tightly it would be on the way to solving my problem on the client side even if the servers don't cooperate with segregating password resets from regular e-mail.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'd venture to say that this is a way to allow you to give your iPad to your kids, let them use their own login and have access to their own set of apps. Everyone is jumping on the kiddie tablet bandwagon.
Huzza! It is good to see that the USPTO hasn't lost its ability to grant patents on totally stupid stuff... Now I can expect to gain much dosh for my patent (pending) for Serial Respiration as a Means to Promote Health...
On the count of prior art: Kid's Corner on WinMo. You swipe in a pre-determined manner (right-to-left on the lock screen), and it grants you access to a user-defined set of apps.
Reading the patent, it appears Apple managed to patent allowing access to some programs without a passcode from the lock screen of a device while protecting others, so e.g. you can quickly swipe to make a phone call or control your music, but have to enter a code to read your email or access your word processor documents.
I doubt that highly, as this is excatly how Windows has behaved since Vista in 2006.
Either the patent office has the most computer-illiterate patent reviewers or there is an intentional just approve anything mentality there, at least where Apple is concerned. I wonder if Samsung had applied for this patent if it would have been approved?
patent for accessing something without access code on a mobile device? or stuff that kinect does, but on a touchscreen instead of air ? and instead of "gesture" its now an access code represented by a gesture ?
1990s: "... on a computer!"
2000s: "... on the Internet!"
2010s: "... on a mobile device!"
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Doesn't Cyanogenmod already do this?
@enaBLE (capability) wHEEL
Password: ******
There are other (and even older) examples; that is just the one that occurred to me first...
Some versions of Unix support capabilities, of course. Here we are using the word "capability" in a more abstract sense like the non-technical word "permission"; the system need not be capability-based. So it seems to me that all that Apple has patented is the use of the lock screen and PIN as the UI to enable the capability: the password determines which capabilities will be unlocked. And lock screens and PINs are nothing new. And inputting different passwords to cause different effects is not new, either. A good modern example of such security-through-obscurity is TrueCrypt hidden volumes. I haven't read the patent, but it seems like every element is old hat, and the combination seems pretty much "...on a mobile device".
I know my android already has some of this for alarms and music, and I would indeed like to see it expanded - I want my email to be protected, but I want to be able to hit pause on my workout program easier.
I don't read AC A human right
Here is the patent claim 1. Remember, in order to infringe a patent claim, you have to have ALL ELEMENTS. If even one thing is different, you don't infringe that claim.
1. A method for changing the an operational mode of a device, comprising: receiving a first gesture from a user while the device is in a locked mode, wherein while in the locked mode all applications except an unlocking application are inaccessible to the user, wherein the unlocking application grants access to at least one application that was heretofore inaccessible, wherein the first gesture is associated with a first unlocked mode of the device; determining if the first gesture is recognized by the device; changing the operational mode of the device from the locked mode to the first unlocked mode using the unlocking application in response to the first gesture only when the first gesture is recognized, wherein while in the first unlocked mode at least a first application associated with the first gesture becomes accessible; receiving a second gesture from the user while the device is in the first unlocked mode, the second gesture associated with a second unlocked mode of the device; determining if the second gesture is recognized by the device; and changing the operational mode of the device from the first unlocked mode to the second unlocked mode in response to the second gesture only when the second gesture is recognized, wherein while in the second unlocked mode at least a second application associated with the second gesture becomes accessible, wherein the first unlocked mode allows access to applications in a first group of applications, the second unlocked mode allows access to applications in a second group of applications, and the first group of applications and the second group of applications are mutually exclusive.
> "But the basic idea is the same!" you cry... to which I point out
Point it out all you like. When the patent is IN ITS ENTIRETY "use the speaker/mic combo on a mobile phone to transmit data acoustically. You know, like... through the air and stuff. For credit card transactions." then if it's being done EVEN AT BAUD RATE = 1, it's previously been done.
Is there a patent on reducing the ambient noise to clarify the sound? Yes.
A patent on recognising data packets? Yes.
A patent on mic/speaker? Yes.
Then when putting them together, what is the novel use and required patenting? If you don't even need to get a copy of the device, merely see it working to work out how to do it (since this is all this, and the above, patent says), then it is not detailed enough to re-implement from the patent and the patent is invalid.
Patents were an alternative to trade secret.
If it cannot be held as a trade secret, then it should never be patentable. Because if trade secret were never an option, then patent cannot be an alternative to it.
True, this isn't a trivial patent, it isn't a patent AT ALL.
NOWHERE does it explain how to make this. Only what non-implemented mechanoids (i.e. the user) would do.
The illustrations are not indicating the method of patent, only indicating "the sort of thing".
Would you be able to patent "A car engine using petrol to make it go round faster when you push petrol in quicker" then put a picture of a lego car to show where it could be used?
No?
That's what this "patent" is doing.
A duress code could be considered prior art for this. Using the duress code gives access (or turns off the alarm) as with the normal code, however it enhances the alarm message.
The USTPO needs to be "nuked"
burnt right to the ground
a "scorched earth" policy , nothing left of it
then rebuild on SANE principles
Sounds similar to those highly annoying Vista UAC pop-ups to me...
Didn't the public just say do-not-want for this type of thing?
At least this doesn't appear to reduce security (like UACs)...
So I need to throw away all my devices that support parental controls and multiple user accounts?
"The technology, detailed in a patent..."
It's a simple algorithm, not a "technology". Calling it a technology makes it sound like they actually created something new versus just stringing together existing ideas in a simple and non-novel way.
I don't know about vanilla Android, but I've got a phone running Cyanogenmod 7 that does exactly what's described in the patent, as well as several other things that might or might not fall under it.
Pre touchscreen phones often allowed you to direct dial emergency services even if the phone was password locked.
John_Chalisque
An idea can exist for 2000 years, and until Apple patents it, no one implements it.
You should thank them; it'll be implemented in the next nightly Android build :P
On netbooks, I was doing this for years. (since 2009 in fact). So the only change is how the non-password software program is initiated.
With the netbook, it was simple. No initial password. Use the unprotected apps as you wish, When you need access to the protected ones, its just one access/password to enter. Thereafter, all code is free, subject to Linux rules.
La de da to Apple. See the lawsuits fly. Time to buy made in New Zealand products before the trade barriers go up.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada