Apple has filed a pair of motivating patent applications with the US patent and brand name office,
in which detail possible future implementations of unreleased features which
may appear in some of company’s future products.
The
first patent permitted “Seamlessly Embedded Heart Rate Monitor”
covers Heartbeat Biometrics,
and directly relates to the actual biometric identification of users.
To determine the user’s heart rate, heartbeat, or other cardiac
signals, the electronic device can include one or more sensors embedded in the
device. The one or more sensors can include leads for receiving electrical
signals from the user’s heart. . . . To provide an electrical signal from the
user to the processing circuitry, the leads can be exposed such that the user
may directly contact the leads, or may instead or in addition be coupled to an
electrically conductive portion of the device enclosure
(e.g., a metallic bezel or housing forming the exterior of the device).
The
second patent filed entitled “Multidimensional Widgets”
covers the company’s research into offering Mac OSX Dashboard widgets with multiple sides, allowing
for the on-screen exploitation of these objects. The patent also references a
“widget receptacle”, where multiple 3D widgets could be grouped together based
on certain criteria.
For example, a three-dimensional widget with four or fewer functions
can be of the form of a tetrahedron; a three-dimensional widget with five or
six functions can be of the form of a hexahedron; a three-dimensional widget
with seven or eight functions can be of the form of a octahedron; and a three-dimensional
widget with nine functions can be of the form of a dodecahedron. Thus, if a
user specifies ten stock tickers for quotes and technical’s, the
widget 420 can expand from a hexahedron to a dodecahedron.
Two
motivating patents I’m sure you’ll agree, and while in the past some of Apple’s
patents have come to fruition in products we know and love today,
the filing of these patents doesn’t necessarily mean we will see the technology or its accomplishment
seen here, anytime soon.
That said, these patents are attractive as
they show both the research going on over at and the potential future roadmap
of Apple.
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