Patents Assigned to Apple
  • Patent number: 11573351
    Abstract: An electronic watch includes a frame and a cover. The cover is attached to the frame, and the frame and cover at least partially define an interior volume of the electronic watch. An optical sensor assembly including a light emitter and a light receiver is positioned within the inter volume of the frame. An optical barrier is positioned between the optical sensor assembly and the cover and includes a magnetic material that forms a light blocking-wall between the light emitter and the light receiver. The magnetic material is configured to removably couple the electronic watch with a charging device via a magnetic attraction between the magnetic material and a magnetic component of the charging device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 6, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple, Inc.
    Inventors: Saahil Mehra, Jacky G. Ko, Saijin Liu
  • Patent number: 11576142
    Abstract: Described is an apparatus of a User Equipment (UE) operable to communicate with a fifth-generation Evolved Node-B (gNB) on a wireless network. The apparatus may comprise a first circuitry and a second circuitry. The first circuitry may be operable to process a Tracking Reference Signal (TRS) transmission and to process a Synchronizati on Signal block (SS-block) transmission. The second circuitry may be operable to measure a reference signal parameter based on the TRS transmission and the SS-block transmission.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 8, 2018
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Yushu Zhang, Guotong Wang, Alexei Davydov, Gang Xiong
  • Patent number: 11575483
    Abstract: Devices and methods of reducing overall Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request-Acknowledgment (HARQ-ACK) of user equipment (UE) using a large amount of carrier aggregation are generally described. The UE may receive a subframe from an enhanced NodeB (eNB). The subframe may contain a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) formed in accordance with a Downlink Control information (DCI) format. The DCI format may comprise a Downlink Assignment Index (DAI) for Time Division Duplexed (TDD) and Frequency Division Duplexed (FDD) operation. The UE may determine, dependent on the DAI, a number and ordering of Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request-Acknowledgment (HARQ-ACK) bits to be transmitted on a Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) and subsequently transmit the HARQ-ACK bits.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 25, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Hong He, Seunghee Han, Hwan-Joon Kwon, Gang Xiong
  • Patent number: 11575835
    Abstract: A camera may use a multi-axis image sensor shifting system to implement both autofocus (AF) and optical image stabilization (OSI) functions. The multi-axis image sensor shifting system may include a flexure suspension arrangement and an actuator. The flexure suspension arrangement may include an inner frame, an intermediate frame, and an outer frame. The actuator may include one or more magnets, and two sets of one or more coils attached respectively to some of the frames of the flexure suspension arrangement. Current flowing through the coils may be regulated to interact with the magnetic field of the magnets to generate motive force to move an image sensor of the camera relative to a lens group in multiple directions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 21, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Bin Xu, Aurelien R. Hubert
  • Patent number: 11573393
    Abstract: Various embodiments include a camera having one or more base cutouts for a position sensing arrangement. For example, the position sensing arrangement may be used to determine a position of a moveable lens group and/or a moveable image sensor. According to some embodiments, a base structure of the camera may include a cutout that allows for a protrusion of a lens carrier to extend (e.g., in a direction parallel to an optical axis of the camera) past at least a portion of the base structure. A probe magnet may be attached to the protrusion of the lens carrier, and a position sensor for sensing magnetic fields of the probe magnet may be attached to the substrate.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 29, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Zachary W. Birnbaum, Nicholas D. Smyth
  • Patent number: 11574066
    Abstract: Disclosed herein is a technique for implementing a secure lock screen on a computing device. The secure lock screen is configured to permit particular applications to display their content—such as main user interfaces (UIs)—while maintaining a desired overall level of security on the computing device. Graphics contexts, which represent drawing destinations associated with the applications, are tagged with entitlement information that indicates whether or not each graphics context should be displayed on the computing device when the computing device is in a locked-mode. Specifically, an application manager tags each application that is initialized, where the tagging is based on a level of entitlement possessed by the application. In turn, a rendering server that manages the graphics contexts can identify the tagged entitlement information and display or suppress the content of the applications in accordance with their entitlements.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 18, 2019
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Matthew E. Shepherd, Joshua H. Shaffer, Chendi Zhang, Daniel O. Schimpf, Benjamin E. Nielsen, Cameron W. Zwarich
  • Patent number: 11573450
    Abstract: An electronic device may have a display and other optical components such as optical sensors. The display and other components may be overlapped by chemically strengthened glass coherent fiber bundles. The surfaces of a coherent fiber bundle may include ion-exchanged glass that places theses surfaces under compressive stress. In some configurations, the coherent fiber bundle is symmetrically stressed and has equal amounts of compressive stress on opposing surfaces. In other configurations, the coherent fiber bundle is asymmetrically stressed and has more compressive stress on one surface than the other. The coherent fiber bundle may have areas with curved cross-sectional profiles, planar areas, and/or areas with compound curvature. Sensor windows may be formed in the coherent fiber bundle that are surrounded by an opaque area. When overlapping a display, the coherent fiber bundle may serve as a display cover glass layer.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 20, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Christopher D. Jones, Dale N. Memering, Daniel J. Barrett, Erik G. de Jong, Sameer Pandya, Tyler A. Marshall
  • Patent number: 11573253
    Abstract: A power detector circuit that rejects the common mode portion of a differential signal is disclosed. The circuit includes a differential input having first and second input nodes. Differential and common mode circuit paths are coupled to the differential input. The common mode circuit path includes first and second capacitors coupled to respective first terminals of first and second input nodes of the differential input. The second terminal of each of the first and second capacitors is coupled to a gate terminal of a first bias transistor. The common mode circuit path is configured to reject a common mode portion of a differential input signal provided to the differential input such that a differential output signal is indicative of an amount of power of a differential portion of the differential input signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 8, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Yashar Rajavi, Sohrab Emami-Neyestanak, Abbas Komijani
  • Patent number: 11573636
    Abstract: A haptic actuator may include a housing, a stator coupled to a medial interior portion of the housing, and a field member within the housing and having an opening receiving the stator therein. The field member may include a frame, and at least one permanent magnet carried by the frame. The at least one permanent magnet may include side-by-side magnetic segments having alternating magnetic polarizations with at least one non-vertical magnetic polarization transition zone between adjacent magnetic segments.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 29, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Darya Amin-Shahidi, Denis G. Chen, Alex M. Lee, Scott D. Ridel
  • Patent number: 11573097
    Abstract: Some embodiments provide a commute application that provides a first presentation of several stops along a route. The commute application also receives a selection of a stop from the several stops along the route. The commute application further provides a second presentation for displaying several different routes that traverse through the selected stop.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 20, 2018
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: May-Li Khoe, Joseph A. Hagedorn, Marcel van Os
  • Patent number: 11575622
    Abstract: At an electronic device with a touch-sensitive display, display a message transcript, where the message transcript includes at least one message from at least a first user. Determine, based at least in-part on the at least one message, a plurality of suggested one or more characters. Display, on the touch-sensitive display, the plurality of suggested one or more characters. Detect an input on the touch-sensitive display. Determine whether the input represents user selection of one of the plurality of suggested one or more characters. Display the selected one of the plurality of suggested one or more characters in the message transcript. Send the selected one or more characters to the first user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 15, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Lawrence Y. Yang, Giulia Pagallo, Linden B. Siahaan, Justin Wood, Roberto Garcia, Jerome Rene Bellegarda, Tiffany S. Jon
  • Patent number: 11575209
    Abstract: An electronic device may have a first conductive sidewall at an upper end, a second conductive sidewall at a lower end, and a conductive rear wall. First and second antennas may be formed at the upper end and may include slots with edges defined by the first sidewall and the rear wall. Third, fourth, fifth, and sixth antennas may be formed at the lower end and may include slots with edges defined by the second sidewall and the rear wall. Each antenna may cover multiple frequency bands. First order and third order modes of the slots may contribute to the frequency responses of the third through sixth antennas. A display controller may be mounted at the lower end and may impose a lower limit on the frequencies covered by the third through sixth antennas. The first and second antennas may cover lower frequencies than the third through sixth antennas.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 18, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: David Garrido Lopez, Aobo Li, Forhad Hasnat, Harish Rajagopalan, Mikal Askarian Amiri, Rodney A. Gomez Angulo
  • Patent number: 11573603
    Abstract: An electronic device may be provided with a display mounted in a housing. The display may have an array of display pixels that provide image light to a user. The array of display pixels may form an active display structure with a rectangular shape. The rectangular active display structure may be surrounded by an inactive border region. Optical structures such as upper structures formed from a sheet of glass and lower optical structures that lie beneath the sheet of glass may be configured to bend light from the display pixels along the periphery of the active display structure. The upper optical structures may have an area that is larger than the area of the active display structure, so that the presence of the optical structures may serve to enlarge the apparent size of the display. The lower and upper optical structures may have curved surfaces for bending the light.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 9, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Christopher D. Prest, Tseng-Mau Yang, Dale N. Memering
  • Patent number: 11573998
    Abstract: This application relates to a client-server architecture that enables search queries to be applied to transcription information for multimedia files. A server device implements a service configured to query a search platform to retrieve results associated with a plurality of multimedia files stored in a content database. The results are ordered according to a plurality of heuristic values calculated based on a text relevance analysis. The service is configured to modify the heuristic values to adjust an order of the results, and generate a response to a search request that includes a representation of at least a portion of the transcription information of the multimedia files referenced by the results. The heuristic values are modified based on at least one of a popularity score for a corresponding multimedia file, a weight associated with a particular field, or a relevance score based on feedback signals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 16, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Nicholas A. Tucey, Peter Leong, Venkatakrishnan S. Sundaranatha
  • Patent number: 11576271
    Abstract: A cold worked stainless steel bezel for a portable electronic device is provided. The bezel is secured flush to a housing to form part of the case of the portable electronic device. A brace that includes a slot for receiving a wall extending from the bezel is fixed to the housing. When the bezel engages the housing, the wall of the bezel is inserted in the slot of the brace and releasably held by a spring that engages both the brace and the wall. The bezel can be released by disengaging the spring, (e.g., using a special tool or a magnetic field). Because the bezel is manufactured from cold worked stainless steel, it is hard and resistant to impacts. Cold worked steel also facilitates manufacturing within design constraints and tolerances, and requires very little machining after manufacturing to comply with those constraints.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 22, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: APPLE INC.
    Inventors: Stephen P. Zadesky, Phillip M. Hobson, Tang Yew Tan
  • Patent number: 11575884
    Abstract: A system may include multiple electronic devices. A first device such as a source electronic device may supply visual content for displaying by a display in a second electronic device such as a display electronic device. The display electronic device may be a television or other device with a display. Calibration operations may be performed by taking light measurements on light produced by the display when test content is provided from the first device to the second device. A third electronic device in the system such as a portable electronic device with an ambient light sensor may make measurement on the light from the display while the test content is being displayed. The test content may contain a test image target with time-varying color and time-varying intensity, allowing calibration information such as gamma curves to be obtained on the display.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 19, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Osborn F. de Lima, Jiaying Wu, Lu Zhang, Nathaniel C. Begeman, Shahram Peyvandi, Adria Fores Herranz
  • Patent number: 11571766
    Abstract: Markings for electronic devices are disclosed. Markings are formed through a laser-based process which transforms a colorant in a multilayer structure disposed along an interior surface of a cover. The transformed colorant defines a marking visible along an external surface of the electronic device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 12, 2019
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: APPLE INC.
    Inventors: Matthew S. Rogers, Manish Mittal, Marta M. Giachino, Michael S. Nashner
  • Patent number: D977436
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 19, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Jody Akana, Bartley K. Andre, Shota Aoyagi, Anthony Michael Ashcroft, Jeremy Bataillou, Daniel J. Coster, Daniele De Iuliis, M. Evans Hankey, Julian Hoenig, Richard P. Howarth, Jonathan P. Ive, Duncan Robert Kerr, Matthew Dean Rohrbach, Peter Russell-Clarke, Mikael Silvanto, Christopher J. Stringer, Eugene Antony Whang, Rico Zörkendörfer
  • Patent number: D977517
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 14, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Alan C. Dye, Lucas Daniel Langhus, Joseph Mark Willoughby Luxton, Christopher I. Wilson
  • Patent number: D977520
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 14, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 7, 2023
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Taylor Gerard Carrigan, Chanaka Karunamuni