Patents by Inventor APPLE INC.

APPLE INC. has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20130217269
    Abstract: Various embodiments of low profile male connectors are described. In one embodiment, a connector includes a plug housing having a depth and an interior cavity designed to accommodate pins that extend within the interior cavity in a direction of the depth. The plug housing may be designed to be fully insertable into a receptacle connector of an electronic device, and to have a rear surface that conforms with a shape of an exterior surface of the electronic device. The pins arranged in the plug housing may include various features, such as connecting portions protruding from the plug housing at an angle of approximately 90 degrees for coupling to a cable, bases including cutouts for extending a length of an elongated shaft of the pin, barbs for engaging the plug housing, and limit stops for distributing a force applied to the elongated shaft upon engagement with a receiving pin.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 15, 2013
    Publication date: August 22, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130215143
    Abstract: Some embodiments provide a method that provides a display area for displaying an image that includes several of edges. The method provides a border drawing tool that in response to cursor movement across the image displays a search window about the cursor. The search window specifies a region to be searched to identify edges for use in defining a border for the image. In some embodiments, the size of the search window varies based on the speed of the cursor. The search window is a square box in some embodiments and a circle in other embodiments. The search window is centered at the cursor in some embodiments. In some embodiments, the display area is also for displaying the defined border over the image.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 21, 2012
    Publication date: August 22, 2013
    Applicant: APPLE INC.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130216740
    Abstract: A method for creating a flexible portion or bending portion within a rigid structure. The method can also be used for creating a flexible structure from a rigid material. The method includes providing a substantially rigid material, such as, but not limited to, metals, alloys, hard plastics, and the like, and selectively removing portions of the rigid material defining a geometric pattern in the rigid material. A bending radius of the flexible portion is defined by the geometric pattern. The rigid structure may be used to create an enclosure, a cover for an electronic device, one or more hinges, or the like.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 15, 2013
    Publication date: August 22, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130216067
    Abstract: A portable computing device is disclosed. The portable computing device can take many forms such as a laptop computer, a tablet computer, and so on. The portable computing device can include at least a single piece housing. The single piece housing including a plurality of steps. The plurality of mounting steps are formed by at least removing a preselected amount of housing material at predetermined locations on the interior surface. At least some of the mounting steps are used to mount at least some of the plurality of internal operating components to the housing.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 2, 2013
    Publication date: August 22, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130219139
    Abstract: In one embodiment, a method for managing access to a fast non-volatile storage device, such as a solid state device, and a slower non-volatile storage device, such as a magnetic hard drive, can include a method of managing a sparse logical volume in which unmapped blocks of the logical volume are not allocated until use. In one embodiment, a method of sparse hole filling operates in which range locks are dynamically adjusted to perform allocations for sparse hole filling, and then re-adjusted to perform standard operations using a byte range lock. In one embodiment, a high level data structure can be used in the range lock service in the form of an ordered search tree, which could use any search tree algorithm, such as red-black tree, AVL tree, splay tree, etc.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 16, 2012
    Publication date: August 22, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc
  • Publication number: 20130218729
    Abstract: Information is presented to a user by accessing a library of electronic publications that includes a first publication, generating a representation of the first publication in an electronic bookshelf, determining a state for the first publication and modifying the representation of the first publication to reflect the state of the first publication.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 25, 2013
    Publication date: August 22, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130219489
    Abstract: Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for storing a password recovery secret on a peripheral such as a power adapter by receiving a password recovery secret at the power adapter via an interface with the computing device, and storing the password recovery secret on a memory in the power adapter. The password recovery secret can be recovered by requesting the password recovery secret from the power adapter, wherein the password recovery secret is associated with a computing device, receiving the password recovery secret from the memory of the power adapter, and recovering a password based on the password recovery secret. The power adapter can include an electrical source interface, an electronic device interface, an intermediate module to adapt electricity between the interfaces, a memory, and a memory interface through which a password recovery secret is received for storage in the memory.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 8, 2013
    Publication date: August 22, 2013
    Applicant: APPLE INC.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130216050
    Abstract: A mobile communications device contains at least two microphones. One microphone is designated by a selector to provide a voice dominant signal and another microphone is designated to provide a noise or echo dominant signal, for a call or a recording. The selector communicates the designations to a switch that routes the selected microphone signals to the inputs of a processor for voice signal enhancement. The selected voice dominant signal is then enhanced by suppressing ambient noise or canceling echo therein, based on the selected noise or echo dominant signal. The designation of microphones may change at any instant during the call or recording depending on various factors, e.g. based on the quality of the microphone signals. Other embodiments are also described.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 14, 2013
    Publication date: August 22, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130210415
    Abstract: Methods and apparatus for intelligently selecting and operating one or more air interfaces of a mobile wireless device for e.g., call setup time reduction. In one embodiment, operation of a high speed cellular interface is selectively adjusted or disabled or switched out when not required so as to minimize call setup times by, e.g., using a different cellular interface to receive pages. In one implementation, the wireless device includes a high-speed cellular interface, a lower-speed cellular interface, and a WLAN (e.g., Wi-Fi) interface.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 15, 2013
    Publication date: August 15, 2013
    Applicant: APPLE INC.
    Inventor: APPLE INC.
  • Publication number: 20130208837
    Abstract: The invention relates to a method of estimating symbols carried by a digital signal that is received by a receiver over a communication channel (5), said symbols being multiplexed or orthogonal frequency sub-carriers. The inventive method comprises the following steps in relation to each symbol carried by the digital signal, consisting in: performing at least two transforms towards the frequency domain (8,9) on a portion of the received signal essentially corresponding to the symbol, said transforms being performed with a determined time lag (10) therebetween: estimating the parameters (r0, r1, . . . , rn, r?0, r?1, . . . , r?n) of the communication channel from pre-determined binary information contained in the digital signal; and estimating the symbol from a combination of the result of each of the transforms performed and the estimated communication channel parameters.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 25, 2013
    Publication date: August 15, 2013
    Applicant: Apple, Inc.
    Inventor: Apple, Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130212318
    Abstract: The disclosed architecture uses address mapping to map a block address on a host interface to an internal block address of a non-volatile memory (NVM) device. The block address is mapped to an internal chip select for selecting a Concurrently Addressable Unit (CAU) identified by the block address. The disclosed architecture supports generic NVM commands for read, write, erase and get status operations. The architecture also supports an extended command set for supporting read and write operations that leverage a multiple CAU architecture.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 21, 2012
    Publication date: August 15, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130212599
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for event notification. In one implementation, a method is provided. A determination is made as to whether a threshold associated with pending event notifications has been exceeded by an incoming event notification. A plurality of pending event notifications that can be combined are identified. Two or more event notifications are combined.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 21, 2012
    Publication date: August 15, 2013
    Applicant: APPLE INC.
    Inventor: APPLE INC.
  • Publication number: 20130212344
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for selectively retiring blocks based on refresh events of those blocks. In addition to refresh events, other criteria may be applied in making a decision whether to retire a block. By applying the criteria, the system is able to selectively retire blocks that may otherwise continue to be refreshed.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 15, 2013
    Publication date: August 15, 2013
    Applicant: APPLE INC.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130212470
    Abstract: An electronic device with a display: concurrently displays a first electronic document and a second electronic document, the first electronic document including a displayed content object; detects a first user input that starts on the content object; in response to a determination that the first user input corresponds to a first command, creates and displays a copy of the content object in the second electronic document; and, in response to a determination that the first user input corresponds to a second command, distinct from the first command: selects the content object; displays an animation of the content object separating from the first electronic document; and initiates display of a plurality of icons proximate to the separated content object, the plurality of icons including at least one icon to initiate display of a user interface for sending the content object to one or more other users.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 10, 2012
    Publication date: August 15, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130211971
    Abstract: Various techniques are provided for the gifting between multiple electronic devices of media content provided by an online digital media provider. An offer and acceptance of a selected gift file is accomplished between a gifter device and a receiving giftee device using a near-field communication (NFC) connection. If a connection to the online provider is available, the gifter device may transmit a gift request by which the gifter's account is charged for the gift file. Thereafter, a gift file created using DRM keys associated with the giftee's account may be downloaded to the giftee device. If a network connection is unavailable, the giftee device may transfer a locked gift file and a corresponding gift license to the giftee device using a peer-to-peer connection. The giftee device may authenticate the license and unlock the gift file once a connection to the online provider is available.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 15, 2013
    Publication date: August 15, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130210388
    Abstract: Methods and apparatus for correcting error events associated with identity provisioning. In one embodiment, repeated requests for access control clients are responded to with the execution of a provisioning feedback mechanism which is intended to prevent the unintentional (or even intentional) over-consumption or waste of network resources via the delivery of an excessive amount of access control clients. These provisioning feedback mechanisms include rate-limiting algorithms and/or methodologies which place a cost on the user. Apparatus for implementing the aforementioned provisioning feedback mechanisms are also disclosed and include specialized user equipment and/or network side equipment such as a subscriber identity module provisioning server (SPS).
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 8, 2013
    Publication date: August 15, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130204925
    Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for collecting, storing, and transmitting account information in a matchable form, and for using this information to quickly set up accounts. Account information is maintained and shared between one or more client devices and an intermediate server. Account information can be reconciled locally to determine whether to add or enable an active account or an account proxy to a client device. Account proxies can be quickly enabled by a single user action. The methods and systems allow enabled accounts and account proxies to be removed from a first client device without propagating the deletion to a second client device.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 5, 2012
    Publication date: August 8, 2013
    Applicant: APPLE INC.
    Inventor: APPLE INC.
  • Publication number: 20130201111
    Abstract: Methods and apparatuses are disclosed that provide increased control of backlit keys for a keyboard. Some embodiments may include controllers within the keyboard that are capable of dynamically programming illumination of the keyboard based upon interaction, where each key of the keyboard may be individually programmed in a dynamic manner. For example, a spell checking function may be executing on a computer system, and as the user types various words, the keyboard may dynamically program the illumination of keyboard controllers such that the next letter of the word being typed is illuminated by the keyboard. Also, different keyboard illumination schemes may be generated based upon mouse movements by the user and/or based upon which application is currently executing.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 19, 2013
    Publication date: August 8, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.
  • Publication number: 20130201534
    Abstract: This disclosure describes systems, methods, and computer program products for displaying one or more pages of a first document in a first region on a user interface; displaying thumbnail images of the one or more pages of the first document in a second region on the user interface; receiving user input for inserting one or more pages from a non-digitized second document into the first document; and in response to the user input, digitizing the one or more pages of the non-digitized second document using a document scanning device, and inserting the one or more pages of the digitized second document into the first document, wherein the inserted pages are displayed as part of the first document on the user interface.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 27, 2012
    Publication date: August 8, 2013
    Applicant: APPLE INC.
    Inventor: APPLE INC.
  • Publication number: 20130205194
    Abstract: In any context where a user can view multiple different content items, switching among content items is provided using an array mode. In a full-frame mode, one content item is visible and active, but other content items may also be open. In response to user input the display can be switched to an array mode, in which all of the content items are visible in a scrollable array. Selecting a content item in array mode can result in the display returning to the full-frame mode, with the selected content item becoming visible and active. Smoothly animated transitions between the full-frame and array modes and a gesture-based interface for controlling the transitions can also be provided.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 25, 2013
    Publication date: August 8, 2013
    Applicant: Apple Inc.
    Inventor: Apple Inc.