Several Apple patents has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.
Patent number 8174452 is for a cavity antenna for wireless electronic devices (top graphic). Wireless portable electronic devices such as laptop computers are provided with cavity-backed monopole antennas.
A wireless device may have a housing. Conductive portions of the housing such as a conductive outer metal layer and internal frame structures may form a cavity having conductive walls. An antenna resonating element structure may be formed from monopole antenna resonating element arms of dissimilar lengths. One of the arms may be straight and another of the arms may be implemented using a meandering path. The antenna resonating element may be mounted over the cavity to form a cavity-backed monopole antenna.
A display within the device may be covered by a cover glass. An opaque bezel region around the periphery of the cover glass may cover the antenna and block it from view. The antenna resonating element arms may run parallel to the longitudinal axis of the cavity. The inventors are Enrique Ayala Vazquez, Hao Xu, Gregory A. Springer, Bing Chiang, Eduardo Lopez Camacho and Douglas B. Kough.
Patent number 8175288 is for an user interface for mixing sounds in a media application (second graphic). A media application for providing outputs (e.g., audio outputs) in response to inputs received from an input device is provided. The media application may connect input mechanisms of an input device with parameters of channel strips (e.g., which may define output sounds) using an intermediate screen object. The media application may first assign an input mechanism to a screen object, and separately map a screen object to a channel strip parameter.
The media application may map a screen object to several channel strips simultaneously such that, based on the value of the screen object, the volume of each of the several channel strips changes. The media application may provide a graphical representation of available channel strips using layers. As the media application accesses a channel strip, the appearance of the portion of the layer associated with the channel strip may change. The media application may also allow the patches, which may include several channel strips, to survive after a new patch is selected instead. The inventors are Gerhard Lengeling, Markus Fritze and Chris Moulios.
Patent number D659160 is for the ornamental design for an icon for a portion of a display screen on iCal and Calendar (third graphic) Freddy Anzures is the inventor.
Patent number 81756285 involves importing media content items. Systems and techniques are disclosed for allowing a user to view and edit media content items while those media content items are being transferred from one location to another. For example, a method can include receiving a request to transfer a media content from a source memory location where the media content item resides to a destination memory location; reading from the source memory location a sufficient amount of data to create in a database associated with the application a first record corresponding to the media content item to be transferred, the first record including a pointer to the source memory location of the media content item; initiating a transfer of the media content item to the destination memory location, and making the media content item available for manipulation prior to completion of the transfer of the first media content item. Mark Shackelford is the inventor.
Patent number 8175802 involves adaptive route guidance based on preferences. Adaptive route guidance can include analyzing route progressions associated with one or more routes based on multiple user preferences. The adaptive route guidance can provide one or more preferred routes based on the user preferences including those derived from historical selection or use, which can be presented to a user for navigation purposes. The inventors are Scott Forstall, Gregory N. Christie, Robert E. Borchers and Kevin Tiene.
Patent number 8174830 is for an electronic device with a replicating status indicator. Per the patent, an adapter may couple an electronic device to a host such as a computer. When coupled in this way, the host may transfer media files to the device. The host may also supply power to the electronic device using power lines in the adapter. The electronic device may have a status indicator such as a light-emitting diode status indicator. The adapter may also have a status indicator. During operation, the electronic device may transmit coded information on the current state of the status indicator in the electronic device by modulating the status indicator or other load in the device at a selected frequency.
Control circuitry in the adapter may detect the transmitted state information by monitoring the power lines. The control circuitry may control the status indicator in the adapter so that the status indicator in the adapter replicates the current state of the status indicator in the electronic device. Ward C. Travis, Stanley Rabu and Terry Tikalsky are the inventors.
Patent number 81748502 involves touch event processing for web pages. Per the patent, one or more touch input signals can be obtained from a touch sensitive device. If the touch input signals are associated with one or more regions of a web page displayed on the touch sensitive device, a touch event associated with the regions of a web page is processed by the web page. Otherwise, the touch events can be processed by an application (e.g., a browser). The inventors are Gregory Dennis Bolsinga, Tim Omernick and Richard Williamson.