At least when Apple do stuff they do it right and usually first to do it right - i.e. their fingerprint sensor is great - the one used by others is poor in comparison.
Apple patent pokes at holographic iPhone screen
Future Apple iPhone and iPad handsets could sport holographic screens, if a company patent filing comes to fruition. An application posted Thursday by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) details a display system which would use projection hardware and parabolic lenses to create 3D interfaces. The filing suggests that …
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Thursday 24th April 2014 20:37 GMT Big_Ted
How ? ? ?
How can they patent something that doesn't exist ?
OK if they have a working model then fine they deserve a patent but this is a patent for something that might exist in the future.
On this basis I should be able to patent anything I can dream up without a real proof of possible manufacture.
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Thursday 24th April 2014 23:47 GMT Grikath
Re: How ? ? ?
That, my man, is because of the USPTO, which simply accepts anything written on a napkin if it comes from the Right Companies.
Now if Apple would have filed in Europa and Asia as well, they might be on to something, but stuff like this would end up in the Circular File right away there. As it is, this is simply one of their usual "we'll file it, just in case someone else figures it out and markets it here, so we can sue later on grounds of this "patent".
And people wonder why an increasing number of tech companies/manufacturers have stopped bothering with the US altogether...
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Saturday 26th April 2014 16:03 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: How ? ? ?
"That, my man, is because of the USPTO, which simply accepts anything written on a napkin if it comes from the Right Companies."
Or indeed, the Wrong Companies. I believe the law is that they'll accept anything written on a napkin, period. The effect, as we can all see, is that patent protection is increasingly hard to achieve in the US for genuine inventions. Ironically, this probably means the current patent system in the US actually violates the consitutional demand for such a system to exist.
One day, someone will try to argue that either in court or in Congress and the whole house of cards will come down.
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Thursday 24th April 2014 20:41 GMT M Gale
Sega Hologram?
Granted it doesn't have the user tracking, but it does have everything else.
Anybody old enough to have been in an arcade when these machines were doing the rounds will remember the weird eye-bending pop-up effect it achieves. Neat to look at, but your eyes will hate you if you try to put your hand through the apparent image.
Also the same effect as seen in a bunch of executive toys where you stick an object between two curved mirrors, and the object appears to float in the middle of an aperture at the top of the toy.
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Thursday 24th April 2014 21:03 GMT dbhh
Research
I researched and created computer generated holograms at university 14 years ago. Many others before and since have advanced this field.
There is a whole Wikipedia article about it, full of prior art http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-generated_holography
And Apple can fucking patent it? I give up.
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Thursday 24th April 2014 22:17 GMT ThomH
Re: Research
Do we know that they can yet though? I notice that the story refers to a filed patent and the linked US government web site refers to it as a "United States Patent Application".
I don't pay that much attention but surely this is the stage where people with prior art are meant to come forward and say so?
Of course it's the US patent office, so, yeah, they'll get the patent regardless.
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Friday 25th April 2014 16:56 GMT Dave 126
Re: Research
>because it's on "a mobile device"
Who said it was for a mobile device? From the Patent App:
Growing interest in the applications of 3D viewing is evident not only in the field of computer graphics but also in a wide variety of other environments such as education, medical diagnostics, biomechanical engineering, etc.
Looks like workstation stuff to me.
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Thursday 24th April 2014 23:31 GMT andreas koch
Oh wow.
Just think of how this is going to get blown out of proportion as soon as it's been through a few
fanboitech-savvy creative artists-forums: It'll be a feature oftheiPhone 6W (the iWatch-wristphone), it'll project imax (why else would they call the cinema like that?) films in 4k x 2k including 8.2 channel THX in a virtual size of 45' diameter and 12' high around you, and it will make Siri interact with you not only visually but also orally. It also obviously has solved the battery time problem of the iWatch, since it clearly states 46 hours of running time on the drawing (in the top. left of the Z [stands for "Zeit", time in German], there's the number 46. What else could it mean? There. Proof.). There'll be videos about it. Watch to the end for the features!Beautiful.
ha. sniggersnigger. gnrrrz . . . Bruhahahaha!
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Thursday 24th April 2014 23:54 GMT David Webb
X Step Programme
Step 1) Watch a Sci-Fi Movie or TV show
Step 2) Write down the futuristic technology shown
Step 3) Make a vague patent on the technology shown on the TV show
Step 4) Sue anyone in the future who actually manages to make the stuff actually possible
I'm off to patent "method for using voice activated system on mobile device to transparently obtain information from another device (computer) or service (internet)" ala "Computer, search all my porn files on my desktops porn folder and display the newest obtained on my bedrooms television"
The question is though, can you patent ideas and concepts? 3D holographic displays have existed since (at least) the 70's as an idea/concept, so if Apple are trying to simply patent an idea/concept which already exists then shouldn't Lucasarts (now Disney) own the patent (or whoever actually has prior art, though not sure Asmiov/Clarke can file a patent).
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Friday 25th April 2014 09:17 GMT Alan Denman
Anti innovation again,
So all those current interactive 3D games belong to Apple as soon as they move to more fuller 3D.
DO you really think this is an invention when it simply bans progress.
I can see what they are getting at, they will expensively rent out the right to write software on their platform.
Elsewhere game development has to stop !
Progress?
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Friday 25th April 2014 12:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Anti innovation again,
Dave, the problem is that no one knows how it works because it has not been built. All anyone can say is this is how it MIGHT work which is typical of many Apple patents where they have not built a working model.
It is not a real patent (one with a working model to back it), just one to either stop anyone else doing anything about it or make money off other companies R&D.
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Friday 25th April 2014 17:00 GMT Dave 126
Re: Anti innovation again,
They do tend to use the the 'might' a lot, but I thought that was just to cover any loopholes (e.g it matters not if a screen is CRT, LCD, IPS, OLED etc).
As far as I can work it out, it has something in common with a camera obscura...then it starts using equations... eek.
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Friday 25th April 2014 10:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
I love how half the people here are screaming bloody murder because Apple have patented something they can't possibly make, and the other half are screaming bloody murder because Apple have patented something so simple it's self-evident. And nobody has the slightest clue what a patent is actually for in the first place!
What a way to run a railroad.
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Friday 25th April 2014 11:00 GMT JetSetJim
Application description
Trying to read the engineering through the legalese in the patent application, it seem that Apple have "invented" a dual display for 3-D. The first one is in charge of the proper 3-D display, and the second one is a mirrored version of the first (or at least sensors of manipulations in a separate volume of space) that the user can poke to make the display change. It's not at all clear to me why you'd have a secondary display as it kind-of makes the primary one redundant - perhaps the resolution on the primary one will be greater.
Personally, it still smacks of taking existing stuff and slapping them together in an obvious manner (perhaps non-obvious in that they don't really need the primary display, so it's a bit of a waste of time!). There are already 3-D displays, and there are (probably) already sensors that can tell you where a fingertip is in a space (certainly can look at a hand, isn't that what Kinect can do? And what about the various VR/Glove combinations). Couple that with lots of Science-Fiction films and it is blindingly obvious to slap them together to make them interact and the only surprise is that no-one has made a commercial product that I know of (not that I've looked). One would hope that on examination, this patent is either chucked out or scoped right down to be so narrow it is trivial to avoid infringement.
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Friday 25th April 2014 11:02 GMT jubtastic1
Very old school tech
The old parabolic mirrors making something appear to float in the air thing, given the limitations of this design, tiny rendering area compared to the size of the device and limited viewing angles, this looks more like it would be used for an indicator or control interface than a main display.