The U.S. Patent Office granted Apple a number of patents just before the expected launch of its tablet Wednesday morning, and surprise! One of them concerns an Apple tablet.
However, the patent in question, “Proximity Detector in Handheld Device“, doesn’t cover the tablet itself, but a means of data entry within it.
In short, the patent defines what a tablet or other portable device would have to do to detect an object approaching it, determine what that object was, and then provide an appropriate response. The patent describes how a tablet could detect a finger or other stylus before it actually touches the surface of the tablet or touchscreen, and then deliver the appropriate response:
“The processor instructs the display device to display one or more
GUI
elements in response to detected object, and perform actions associated
with the GUI
element when an input is made at the GUI element via the input means,”
in the words of the patent.
The tablet could perform detection
based on “capacitive, electric field, inductive, hall effect, reed, eddy
current, magneto resistive, optical shadow, optical visual light,
optical IR, optical color recognition, ultrasonic, acoustic emission,
radar, sonar, conductive or resistive” according to Patently
Apple, who is credited with discovering the newly-granted patent.
Apple was also granted patents concerning the management of wireless
channel bandwidth, with applications in video conferencing; color
management, so that colors are accurately represented across a range of
devices; an image-rotation patent, that orients the image to the same
orientation as to when the image was originally captured; and two other
patents, covering switching IC ports to card slots, and timeline-based
manipulation of audio and video tracks.
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