Three Apple patents in addition to those already covered have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 7792881 is for a method and apparatus for managing file extensions in a digital processing system. An exemplary method of managing file extensions in a digital processing system involves a user interface and a plurality of files, each file having a name that comprises a filename and an extension. The method includes associating a file with an indicator which is user selectable for a single file in a plurality of files in said digital processing system and which indicates how to display an extension of the file, and assigning a value to the indicator, and displaying a displayed name of the file in the user interface in a style determined by the indicator. The inventors are Scott Forstall and Edward D. Voas.

Patent number 7792024 is for IO Latency Reduction. It involves an application and audio driver communicate audio data via a ring buffer using a system interface. An application reads or writes data from the buffer in a unit of data. Positions within the buffer correspond to a particular time. To write data to the buffer at a particular position in the buffer that corresponds to a particular time, an application is awaken a period of time ("client-side offset") before the driver reaches the position.

The period of time is computed based on a variety factors. One factor is the amount of time the system interface assumes an application uses to write the unit of data to the buffer. For operations that entail the application inserting data into the buffer, the application may specify a weight value to apply to the factor to reduce it and the latency period. The inventors are Jeffrey C. Moore, Douglas S. Wyatt and William George William.

Patent number 7792188 involves selecting encoding types and predictive modes for encoding video data. In some embodiments, a method of determining encoding type and predictive mode(s) selections for a macroblock of a video frame is provided. In some embodiments, a general method 1) selects the encoding type (16.times.16 or 4.times.4) that is initially considered for a macroblock using an encoding type selection algorithm (based on an attribute of the macroblock that is easy to compute), 2) if the 16.times.16 encoding type is selected in step 1, consider the four 16.times.16 prediction modes that may be used on the macroblock using conventional methods or an improved 16.times.16 predictive mode search algorithm based on distortion thresholds, and 3) if the 4.times.4 encoding type is selected in step 1, select the 4.times.4 prediction mode to be used for each of the sixteen 4.times.4 blocks of the macroblock using conventional methods or an improved 4.times.4 predictive mode search algorithm based on the positional relationships between predictive modes. The inventors are Xin Tong and Xiaochun Nie.