A new Apple patent (number 20120023597) for magnetically implemented security devices has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It relates generally to programmable magnetic devices, and more particularly to security for computing devices and peripherals that may be provided by programmable magnets.

Security devices and methods of securely coupling electronic devices and peripherals are provided. In one embodiment, a peripheral has a first coded magnet on a first surface of a first device. The first coded magnet has at least two different polarity regions on the first surface. A second coded magnet on a second surface of a second device is also provided.

The first coded magnet is configured to securely provide data to a device associated with the second coded magnet, if the first and second coded magnets' patterns are keyed to one another. The inventors are Brett Bilbrey, Aleskandar Pance, Peter Arnold, David I. Simon, Jean Lee, Michael D. Hillman,...

A plethora of patents at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office show that Apple is working on several methods of improving the displays across its product lines.

Patent number 20120019152 is for ambient light calibration for energy efficiency in display systems. It involves a method, system, and apparatus that can be used to operate a display device in an energy efficient manner. The energy efficient display device can effectively and efficiently compensate for changes in ambient light incident at a display screen of the display device using an internal ambient light sensor to provide control signals to a backlight driver. David W. Lum is the inventor.

Patent number 20120019152 involves a display brightness control based on ambient light angles. Methods and devices are provided for controlling the brightness of a display for an electronic device based on ambient light conditions. In one embodiment, an electronic device may employ one...

According to the latest data from Gartner and IDC, Apple continues to gain market share in the personal computer industry. In fact, it's the fastest growing company among the top five US computer makers (see http://macte.ch/4Lanv).

I expect this to continue, thanks to the popularity of iOS devices and the apparent huge success of iCloud, Apple's cloud service. iClouds lets you sync calendars, contacts, email, bookmarks and more across multiple OS X and iOS X devices When it comes to iTunes -- one of Apple's crown jewels (though it needs an overhaul as it's become too bloated) -- iCloud´s purchase history lets you re-download purchased content from any device at any time.

That's very cool and very convenient. What's more, as more and more customers get used to using an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch and storing all their data in iCloud, chances are good that they'll eye a Mac when they make their next...

I've had a few days to play around with the iBooks Author app Apple announced last week. It's pretty cool -- and only underscores my conviction that Macs are going to be around for a loooong time. They'll be creating the bulk of the content we'll be consuming on iOS devices.

iBooks Author is a tool for creating iBooks textbooks (also announced last week). It's a free download at the Mac App Store. The textbooks you create are designed to be read on iOS devices via the iBooks app and the new iTunes U.

That's all well and good, but I'd still like to see iBooks, the iBookstore and iTunes U available on Mac OS X, as well as Newsstand. I want to be able to buy books, textbooks and magazines and have them -- via iCloud -- synced across all my iOS and OS X devices so I can read them whenever and wherever I choose.

What's more, I'm a bit disappointed that Apple didn't incorporate the iBooks Author features into Pages. It would have made the word processing/document...

Recently, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, took issue with the idea that the Android mobile operating system is fragmented, arguing that it's a differentiation between devices rather than a fragmentation. If that's indeed the case, then let's have a new naming system; more on that in a moment.

The difference, as Schmidt explains it, is that differentiation means manufacturers have a choice. They're going to compete on their view of innovation, and try to convince consumers that their innovation is better than somebody else's whereas fragmentation is quite the opposite, he says. Not surprisingly, some company analysts beg to differ, pointing out the ever-increasing incompatibilities between OS and apps across different Android devices and other problems with Android.

So if Schmidt thinks that Android is different for innovation needs, and if the developers/consumers see mounting incompatibilities, then perhaps we need to start talking about a different...

An Apple patent (number 20120013775) for enhanced image capture sharpening has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Apparently, Apple continues to investigate ways to improve the digital camera functions on its iOS devices.

Per the patent, an image capture sharpening subsystem for a digital camera includes a capture sharpening processor and a memory that stores values for a capture sharpening amount. The values for the capture sharpening amount are a function of position on an image sensor of the digital camera. The capture sharpening processor receives a first value for a pixel in an image captured by the image sensor and a position value for the pixel on the image sensor.

The capture sharpening processor determines a pixel sharpening amount from the values for the capture sharpening amount stored in the first memory according to the position value. The capture sharpening processor applies a capture sharpening process to the pixel to provide a second...

Apple will hold an education event today at 10 am (Eastern) in New York City at the Guggenheim Museum. So what's on the agenda?

Of course, only Apple execs know for sure, but the betting company Paddy Power (http://www.paddypowerpic.com) has taken bets on what the subject will be. 
Given the theme of the event it’s unsurprising that the clear favorite is for the announcement concern electronic/digital textbooks at 1/6 odds, followed by the iPad Lite at 6/1 and the iPad 3 at 9/1. 

Further down the list its 14/1 odds that Apple’s CEO Tim Cook will be waxing lyrical about the return of the iMac desktop while an announcement on the iiPhone 5 and an "Apple Robot Teacher" prop up the market at 20/1 and 40/1 respectively.



Yours Truly is giving the odds of an iPad Lite, iPad 3, iPhone 5, new iMac and Apple Robot Teacher (what the heck is that?) as nil. I think Apple will beef up its iBook app...

In what can only be good news for Apple's iBookstore (which will almost certainly be part of Apple's education announcement/s tomorrow) and other ebook vendors,  a recent study indicates that children who read books on digital e-readers such as the iPad and Kindle comprehend what they've read as well as children who read paper books.

The report "Student Comprehension of Books in Kindle and Traditional Formats," was released by Michael Milone, Ph.D., for Renaissance Learning, a leading provider of technology-based school improvement and student assessment programs for K12 schools. Results of the study indicate that parents and educators can rest easy knowing that students comprehend books they read digitally as well as they comprehend books read in a print format.

In this study, fourth-grade students were asked to read books selected from a list of popular fiction titles. Students then alternated between options, reading approximately 50 percent of the books on the...

A new patent (number 8099258) at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office shows that Apple is working on a "smart garment" for exercises and athletes. It builds upon the idea behind the Nike iPod Sport Kit.

The invention relates generally to performance monitoring. More particularly, methods and apparatus electronically pairing an authorized garment and a sensor that receives data from the garment are disclosed.

Per the patent, a sensor authenticated to a garment transfers information, either wirelessly or wired, to an external data processing device. Such information includes location information, physiometric data of the individual wearing the garment, garment performance and wear data (when the garment is an athletic shoe, for example). The external data processing device can be portable digital media players that are, in turn, in wireless communication with a server computer or other wireless devices. The inventors are Brett G. Alten and Robert Edward Borchers....

An Apple patent (number 8099332) for an user interface for application management for a mobile device has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

This specification describes technologies relating to user interfaces for mobile devices. In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of receiving a touch input to access an application management interface on a mobile device; presenting an application management interface; receiving one or more inputs within the application management interface including an input to install a particular application; installing the selected application; and presenting the installed application. The inventors are Steve Lemay and Sean Kelly.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "Conventional mobile devices are often dedicated to performing specific functions. For example, a mobile phone provides telephony services, a personal...

By Daniel East

How is it possible to take a compact digital camera that for most people is already perfect and improve upon its stellar features? It seemed as if this line had reached its pinnacle with the CX4 (http://www.ricoh.com/r_dc), but in true Ricoh style, they weren’t about to let "good enough" suffice.

The new CX5 (US$329) is quite remarkable and there really are some new features, but it all comes down to one word: speed. The CX5 is, by far, their fastest and most impressive incarnation of this body type to date. The new hybrid autofocus is impressive in nearly any situation.

From macro to magnified, the mechanism is smooth and extremely quick, allowing the capture of your subject as your eye sees it -- when it sees it -- and it’s rated at just over 0.2 seconds for either wide-angle or telephoto shooting. Ricoh’s new Super-resolution technology subtly enhances...

A new patent (number ) for a "Sensor Based Display Environment" at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office shows that Apple is working on a motion-based 3D interface for its iOS devices. Although, from reading the patent, there seems to be no reason why the technology couldn't also be implemented on the Mac.

According to the patent, a three-dimensional display environment for mobile device is disclosed that uses orientation data from one or more onboard sensors to automatically determine and display a perspective projection of the 3D display environment based on the orientation data without the user physically interacting with (e.g., touching) the display. Patrick Piedmonte is the inventor.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "Modern computer operating systems often provide a desktop graphical user interface ('GUI') for displaying various graphical objects. Some examples of graphical objects include windows, taskbars, docks, menus and various icons...

A new patent (number 20120008538) for "mobile network device battery conservation system and methods" at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office shows that Apple is working on ways to improve battery life for its devices that can connect wirelessly.

Per the patent, the battery life of a mobile device operating in a wireless network environment is extended by terminating network communication activities after a specified period of time. Network communication activities may be restored when any one of a specified number of user actions are detected. The inventors are Eric Albert, Nate Begeman, Evan Doll, Charles Dominguez, Scott Herz, Dan Keen, David Myszewski, Mallory Paine and Rob Yepez.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "The invention relates generally to mobile wireless devices and, more particularly, to a system and methods for extending the battery life in a network capable mobile device. As used herein, the term 'network' refers to those...

Don't count 3D TV out yet -- or dismiss a 3D "iTV" at some point in the future. While the 3D TV industry is truly global, regional differences are increasing.

For 3D, the most enthusiastic regions are Western Europe and China, while the mix of 3D in North America actually declined in the third quarter of 2011 (Q3’11), according to a new study by NPD DisplaySearch.

"We were surprised to find that 3D appears to be a far more popular feature in China than North America, and the penetration rate was two times higher in the last quarter," says Paul Gray, director of TV Electronics Research, NPD DisplaySearch (http://www.displaysearch.com/). "Our report also indicates that North American and Japanese 3D penetration is lower than the Middle East."

The report finds that North American consumers favor large, inexpensive TV sets with fewer features, unlike other regions. If Apple is...

Apple has been granted eight patents by the US Patent & Trademark Office, involving, among other things, audio data storage (most likely involving iCloud), channel state logic and more.

Patent number 8095375 involves an universal container for audio data. Per the patent, storing audio data encoded in any of a plurality of different audio encoding formats is enabled by parametrically defining the underlying format in which the audio data is encoded, in audio format and packet table chunks.

A flag can be used to manage storage of the size of the audio data portion of the file, such that premature termination of an audio recording session does not result in an unreadable corrupted file. This capability can be enabled by initially setting the flag to a value that does not correspond to a valid audio data size and that indicates that the last chunk in the file contains the audio data.

State information for the audio data, to effectively denote...

Apple is working on a new method and apparatus for cooling electronic devices (mainly Macs), according to a new patent (number 20120002342) at the US Patent & Trademark Office.

Embodiments in the patent provide various apparatus and techniques for deflecting or redirecting a flow of ionized air generated from an ionic wind generator. In general, a deflection field generator can be located proximate to the path of the flow of ionized air. The deflection field generator is configured to generate an electromagnetic field, which deflects a least a portion of the flow of ionized air to a different path and may possibly increase local heat transfer. The inventors are Jean L. Lee and Richard Blanco.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "Many modern electronic systems generate a large amount of heat, and a variety of different cooling mechanisms may be used to cool these electronic systems. For personal electronic systems, such as computers and other...

An Apple patent (number 2012002110) for dynamic backlight adaptation for black bars with subtitles may hint at what Apple has planned for the rumored "iTV" (an Apple-branded HDTV) and perhaps an iMac with television features (see http://www.macnews.com/2011/12/09/imac-tv-functionality-im-there).

In the patent, embodiments of a system that includes one or more integrated circuits are described. During operation, the system receives a video image, that when displayed, includes a picture portion, a non-picture portion, and a subtitle which is superimposed on at least a subset of the non-picture portion, where the non-picture portion has an initial brightness value.

Then, the system scales the brightness of pixels corresponding to a remainder of the non-picture portion of the video image to have a new brightness value...

If Apple does indeed launch its own line of television sets (the much rumored "iTV"), I suspect somewhere down the road the company will offer a 3D version. Heck, probably 3D Macs, too.

Apple isn't going to mess around with ugly, bulky 3D glasses. But Stream TV Networks (http://streamtvnetworks.com/) has announced that it will unveil its new Ultra-D technology at CES 2012. Ultra-D is a "next generation 3D without glasses display technology that surpasses all 3D viewing experiences offered to date," boasts Mathu Rajan, CEO of Stream TV Networks.

Developed by Stream TV Networks, the Ultra-D technology is strictly proprietary and leverages custom hardware, middleware techniques and software algorithms to create autostereoscopic 3D imagery. Rajan says this technology will provide consumers with access to 3D content by enabling real-time conversion of 2D content into 3D autostereoscopic (...

This is part five of a six-part op-ed series in which I make my predictions for Apple's product line-up for 2012. Today we'll look at the company's Mac laptop line-up.

There have been rumors of a 15-inch MacBook Air. My crystal ball says it's coming, along with a 17-inch version. In fact, the entire Mac laptop line will evole into Airs. The 11-inch and 13-inch models will be dubbed MacBook Airs, and the 15-inch and 17-inch versions will be called, simply, MacBook Pros.

All models will come in the svelte design the current Air line-up is famous for. All will ditch built-in optical drives and sport only solid state drives. Apple will expect those who want an optical drive to buy its US$79 SuperDrive. Need more storage? Apple will tout the power of Thunderbolt for that and promote Thunderbolt drives from several companies, which will finally arrive on the scene in greater numbers. The price tag on the pricey drives will drop a bit.

Apple’s future MacBook Airs and...

Apple wants to make it easier to share and store data between a handheld device and Macs, per a patent (number 8090767) at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

A method is described that involves detecting the presence of a pairing partner. Prior to establishing a paired relationship with the pairing partner, a user is prompted to verify himself/herself. In response to the user properly verifying himself/herself, the paring partner is paired with. The pairing includes invoking a remote storage protocol that contemplates a network between the partners to establish on a first of the partners access to non volatile storage resources for general use.

The non volatile storage resources are located on a second of the partners. The second of the partners is a handheld device that provides wireless cell phone service, wireless Internet service and music playback service. The inventors are Mitch Adler and Jonathan Jay Andrews.

Here's part of Apple's background on...

A new patent (number 8089488) at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office shows that Apple is eyeing ways to make it easier for hardware and software to share graphics resources.

Via the patent -- entitled "virtualization of graphics resources" -- graphics resources are virtualized through an interface between graphics hardware and graphics clients. The interface allocates the graphics resources across multiple graphics clients, processes commands for access to the graphics resources from the graphics clients, and resolves conflicts for the graphics resources among the clients. The inventors are John Stauffer, Bob Beretta and Ken Dyke.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "A graphics kernel driver typically interfaces between graphics client drivers and graphics hardware to assign graphics resources to each client driver and to administer the submission of graphics commands to the graphics hardware. Each client driver has explicit knowledge of the...

By Greg Mills

I just read an article where the author listed both the smart and stupid moves Microsoft made for the year. I was struck by the lack of anything revolutionary coming from the intellectually challenged Redmond campus. The Kinect video game sensor more or less topped the list of recently smart moves made by Ballmer. Even Kinect was purchased technology rather than innovation that came out of the massively funded R&D efforts at Microsoft. Microsoft has entered the "declining to irrelevance" phase of tech company evolution.

Steve Jobs famously declared the PC dead and predicted the mobile OS in tablet form was the future of computing. Many would beg to disagree, but the falling numbers in the PC industry prove him right as rain. HP came close to pulling the plug on PCs due to a declining profit margins that may entirely disappear soon.

I was furious that my daughter's school spend money on new PCs rather than iPads. I told the...

A new Apple patent (number 20110317991) at the US Patent & Trademark Office shows that the company is eyeing ways to improve the cameras in its iOS devices. The patent is for a flash control for an electronic rolling shutter.

A scene ambient lighting indication is obtained. An integration time interval and a flash pulse-on time interval for taking a picture is then set. The set integration time interval is shorter when the indication is bright than when the indication is dark; and the set flash pulse-on time interval is longer when the indication is bright than when the indication is dark.

An image is captured using the set integration time interval and the set flash pulse-on time interval in accordance with an electronic rolling shutter (ERS). Other embodiments are also described and claimed. Richard Tsai is the inventor.

Here's Apple's summary of the invention: "An embodiment of the invention is an electronic camera with electronic rolling shutter (ERS...

An Apple patent (number 20110320814) for a system and method for authentication has appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. It involves a means of providing authentication based on a process that utilizes, in one aspect, a physical theory or a physical value such as time and in another aspect, a random value.

The proposed scheme utilizes new algorithms that introduce randomness using a physical value for authentication. An exemplary method includes sharing an initial state value S(0) with a sender and a receiver, generating a sender S(t, v) based on a parameter t and an identifier v and based at least in part on the value S(0). The method includes generating a receiver S(t, v) from S(0) based on the parameter t and the identifier v wherein the parameter t is related to a physical value in authenticating the identifier v based on a comparison of the sender S(t, v) and the receiver S(t, v). The process of generating the sender S(t, v) and the receiver S(t, v)...