Apple Unveils Plans For World Domination July 4, 2008

Read more Announcements , Apple , Appliances

Steve Jobs has on more than one occasion used phrases like 'world domination' in speeches to salivating crowds of Apple fanatics and to this end seems to be employing one of the oldest tricks in the book.

Apple seems to be trying to patent just about every possible human interaction concept that could be used on a product such as a computer, portable player or mobile phone.

A total of 34 patent applications were filed with and recently published by the US Patent & Trademark Office. The details of these are provided in the link below and are far too verbose to recreate here, but in summary they're focused on touch-sensitive technologies and input systems.

Highlights include multi-event input systems capable of distinguishing between, for example, the flesh of a finger or the hard contact of a fingernail. There's also a proximity sensing module that could detect when a user moves away from, or is not using, a particular peripheral and switch it into standby mode to save power.

Exactly how these will all be used is anyone's guess at present, but this shotgun approach could conceivably nail down a leading presence for Apple in these markets for many years to come.

If successful in being granted even half of these it looks like the rest of the industry will have a fair old time trying to move forwards without running into legal battles. - Paul Lester

[MacNN]

Apple touch-sensitive input systems