In countless corners of the internet, predicting Apple's next products is practically its own sport. Rik Myslewski shows you how to get in the game.
Want to be able to predict the future? Well, maybe not everything in the future, but at least what Apple is contemplating for future products. Interested?
Okay, then launch Safari and point it to www.uspto.gov. When that website opens, you'll see a line in the upper-right corner that says "search for patents." Click it. On the page that appears, find the USPTO Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database section, and click Quick Search. In the entry form that pops up, type "Apple" into the Term 1 box, choose Assignee Name in the drop-down menu that's labeled In Field 1, then click the Search button.
The next thing you'll see is a list of Apple patent applications, beginning with the most recent. Among them you'll find everything from fascinatingly futuristic filings such as #20110163944, which describes a method for your iOS device's motion sensors to enable you to "pour" data from one device to another; to the thoroughly geeky, such as #20120082236, which describes optimized deblocking filters. If you're curious about what the heck that means, know that you can search by Document Number in that same drop-down menu.
The USPTO publishes its patent applications every Thursday morning, and if you want to be your coterie's alpha geek, you'll check it before you're off to school, the office, or the preschool playground.
Now about that "predict the future" promise: among the couple of dozen or so weekly Apple patent applications, you'll occasionally stumble upon one that presages future products--maybe not precisely, but certainly enough for you to glimpse what's going on in the well-shuttered labs of One Infinite Loop.
Before the iPad was released, there was patent application #20080204426.
Take, for example, application #20060197753, which was submitted to the USPTO in March 2006 and published that September. It describes a "Multi-functional hand-held device" with capabilities quite like those that eventually showed up in the iPhone. At the January 2007 event during which Steve Jobs introduced that world-conquering device, he first displayed three separate product logos, saying that Apple was introducing a "revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough internet communications device." He then--surprise!--revealed that those three new products were actually a single device: the "Multi-functional hand-held" iPhone.
Then there's US Patent #20080204426, "Gestures for touch sensitive input devices," which was filed in April 2008 and published in August of that year. This patent describes the multi-touch input system that would appear on the iPad. When Apple's überpopular touchscreen tablet--what we at The Register call a fondleslab--appeared in January 2009, we patent geeks already had a head start on understanding its capabilities.
But don't for a nanosecond think that each and every patent application holds secrets of Apple's Next Big Thing™. Most are down-in-the-weeds techie stuff of interest only to engineers. And some are so thoroughly off the wall that it's unlikely that products based on them will ever see the light of day.
My favorite exemplar of that last category is #20090000010, an item that Apple describes as a "High tactility glove system." Essentially, the HTGS is a two-layer cold-weather glove with a conductive inner layer that can poke out through holes in the fingertips of the outer layer, thus enabling its wearer to tickle his or her iOS device without freezing his or her digits.
Then there's a touchscreen mouse, #20110012838; a keyboard that emits a puff of air as your finger approaches it, #20110107958; a beefy bass booster for laptops, #20120082317; and a low-travel keyboard for slim laptops that includes option keys made of "polished meteorite," #20120043191. Trust me, there's a lot to be found on Thursday morning, even if searching www.uspto.gov requires setting your alarm a wee bit earlier. Works for me.
--
Since the late 1980s, Rik Myslewski has paid his rent by keeping an eye on Apple. He was editor-in-chief of MacAddict from 2001 until its transformation into Mac|Life in early 2007, and is now a member of the snarkily sophisticated team at London's The Register, which is "biting the hand that feeds IT" daily at www.theregister.co.uk.
No comments:
Post a Comment