Despite the incredible realism of the drawing above to the left, we're probably not looking at iPhone OS 4.0 right here. Instead we've got Apple doing what Apple does:
applying for a patent for some pretty vague functionality that may or may not end up in a device someday. No harm in that game, but it looks like Google's already done the "put a contact on the home screen with their picture" thing before Apple got a chance, as demonstrated on the right. There are other little tidbits to Apple's approach, however. Apple is naturally showing that little numeric badge we know so well, to show what sort of new activity the contact has (hopefully that pulls calls, SMS and email into one pretty little package, like we've seen on other
modern operating systems), but Apple also mentions that "an icon associated with an entity can be temporarily displayed on the mobile device based on the proximity of the mobile device to the entity." So, Stalking 2.0. We like it, and hope to see it in some future iPhone software, but between the crazy broad claims in the rest of the patent and Android's prior art, we'd say Apple's chances of getting this 2008 submission approved are pretty slim.
posted January 14th 2010 2:51PM
It is apple, if they add something new everybody has to make a big fuss about it.
So you guys are hating on patents now also?
This is like patenting a picture gallery icon on a camera.
but WebOS already has this too…
I think this is just down right freakin' ridiculous. Does this mean that Nokia, Android, etc won't be able to do this anymore?
This is a feature we've seen on phone for sometime now, it's nothing new but because no one had a patent on it, Apple can? And now other companies are screwed? ffs...
I'm all for trying to beat your competition but this is like cheating and it's literally killing the competition and right now I hate Apple for it.
Picture Dial.. Palm 2002... thanks.
it's also avialable on webOS for the pre don't know if the pixie has it ?