One of the most innovative companies in the world in the past couple of years has been Apple, well Google is more innovative, but Apple has completely taken over the Smart Mobile Phone by storm. To protest its dominance, Apple has a host of patents to its name, and rifling through them can offer some fascinating insights into the potential future of technology and the possibilities that are open to the company as it executes its vision for the future convergence culture. I’ve taken a look at some of the most recently published Apple patents and chosen six of the most exciting according to me, to tell you all about.

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1. iSpecs: an advanced head-mounted display system for the iPhone or iPod

I already wrote about this cool patent application from Apple in an earlier post here. However bad these glasses look, the next version will be better. Thats the Apple Lover’s slogan usually so I think this applies here. Augmented Reality is the highlight with these awesome pair of glasses. This system (above) may even host its own video camera or be able to communicate with the camera that’s already inside the iPod touch or iPhone. The system will have some physical controls but other controls may be set off by voice commands and/or head movements.

Read More about the Patent here.

2. Apple’s advanced 3D widgets plan

This seems to be something else: Essentially the patent describes multi-functional 3D widgets which can be lifted or rotated. Combined with Apple’s advanced touch technologies, these could be the closest things yet to 3D control on your computer. Well at least you know those people who have icons all over their desktop will have more place to add icons onto.

Read more about the patent here.

3. Touch me, feel me

Keeping with the trend of having touch screens everywhere now, Here’s another one – an obscure patent which points to a touch screen iMac, MacBook, or more…The description is buried inside a description of another patent. The description supports two of Apple’s January patent applications regarding a touch screen iMac and MacBook. You will have a person with a touch screen soon.

Read More about the patent here

4. The invisible Mac

Apple devices have shows us that they do not like buttons and controls along with cables. This is likely to drive imaginative notions of just how Apple will implement this patent, which describes invisible and light-forming MacBook controls. What could this mean? For example, your keyboard may be invisible until you put your fingers on the thing, and controls could easily be nested without making the machine look cluttered. Have’nt we seen some movies with these interfaces. I guess the future is already here according to those movies.

Read more about the patent here.

4. Health Care with the iPhone

The principle here is pretty simple, and if you tie it up with all these emerging payment systems for the iPhone OS, this is a pretty smart approach. This patent describes a way to build heart sensors into the iPhone and other devices. Devices then note your heartbeat to determine a user’s identity, This also means devices will be able to seamlessly switch between the relevant identities when using shared computers, iPods or other Apple device. More importantly emergencies can be dealt with, with your phone now signalling that you are not really in good health. Think Heart Patients.

Read More about this patent here.

6. iPhone controlling everything

There’s a good deal of speculation that Apple may introduce iPhones equipped with RFID chips, a basic building block for near field communications. What this means is that your iPhone could be easily used for secure payment systems, but combined with other patents – the heart monitor above, an earlier iKey patent, or this one describing a way by which your iPhone can become the ultimate remote control. Stop to think on this for a moment and the reason for the bitter battles within the smartphone industry for market share is clear: mobile devices will be the central device for a users interactions in an incalculable number of directions.

Whatever the case is, Apple seems to be heading on the direction f trying to digitize or Appelize most of our day to day interactions, there are numerous more attempts at the website links below. We might very well be in the future with the standard for anyone to make any new applications being Apple, that is not very good. However, innovations like the ones above and the ‘Thinking Different’ companies approach might just mean that we might not have a choice.

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