Looks very cool!

I didn't object to the camera in the iMacs because I figure that I could place something over it like a lens cap when I didn't want to use it. But with this, it is impossible to use your computer without the specter of someone getting into the system and watching you.

OK, imagine a six-sided cube with all sides made out of these screens. Now imagine that each screen displays the image that is being captured by the screen on the opposite side of the cube. BOOM! The cube becomes invisible. There would of course be some optical anomalies around the edges, but it would work a hell of lot better than a camouflage paint job. Somebody call the Pentagon! If you actually created a sphere out of this material and each pixel displayed the pixel being viewed by the element on the exact opposite side of the sphere it would probably work better, but there would still be a problem with the edges. If you knew where the observer was, you could almost do perfect invisibility by each pixel displaying whatever pixel was on the opposite side of the sphere from the observers point of view. TOO COOL! I hope apple builds a Stealth Mac.

- Dean Swift
deanswift@mac.com

Most corps won't allow having a camera on all of the time, last corp I worked at oulwed cell phones with a camera, we had to have covers intalled to block what we were working on when we ran to the bathroom and we had special coverings on the windows to prevent anyone in offices across the way from seeing in. People were written up and let go for having more than one project out at a time.

I think the scope of this will be more like in the movie Minority Reort. Being able to move things on the screen with motion of your hands and a blink of your eye(s).

Apple demo'ed something like this in the late 80's. It was pretty impressive but I don't think society was ready for it.

I could swear I read this same article this afternoon but there was half a page of comments. Yes, I believe it was TMO I was on. I didn't see anything controversal, although the Orwellian fears were mentioned.

old news, move along...

Well nice idea but without blowing my own trumpet here I thought of a similar concept some 30 years ago, and I dare say so have thousands of others, its just making a simple enough concept work and having the technology to do it. Actually a few years back I saw a TV series where teams of relative experts/students were set technological contests to solve a particular problem and this stealth camouflage concept was one of them. The team had to caourflage a vehical and used cameras and a lcd type display (actually probably a more simple bulb like equivalent I suspect). In a forest and not moving it was quite eeffective though as soon as it moved the fringe effects were substantial and of course the angle at which you viewed it would effect the image even more.

I do also remember reading even further back that the American military were experiment with similar (obviously more sophisticated) systems for uniforms for soldiers like snipers and other high risk attachments. Havn't heard anything since.

As for the Minority report type display this could indeed be a useful use for this though I have only afew weeks ago (proably due to similar stories on Apple patents- hand motion sensor I think) was guided to a few company sites where such displayes were indeed being developed for the military in particular or for education/training purposes. They looked quite dramatic. Certainly gaming would be an interesting possibility here.

Am I the only one to think this has nothing to do with inputing image data as much as it does capturing input data for the UI...? as-in your finger or MULTIPLE fingers, for creating a touch-sensitive display...?

This seems more like a means of tracking near-field movement of objects very close to the display itself. Think of the recent multi-input display movie floating around and the usefulness in the rumored Video iPod which is speculated to forego ACTUAL controls for "virtual" ones on-screen.

Who knows...? Maybe I'M wrong...!

This is the same thing MacObserver Scooped back in January. The patent was filed: June 21, 2004, same number.

http://www.macobserver.com/columns/devilsadvocate/2006/20060125lookingglass.shtml


You beat the New scientist, shout about it! : )

Quote

stuartea wrote:
This is the same thing MacObserver Scooped back in January. The patent was filed: June 21, 2004, same number.

http://www.macobserver.com/columns/devilsadvocate/2006/20060125lookingglass.shtml


You beat the New scientist, shout about it! : )

Quote

stuartea wrote:
This is the same thing MacObserver Scooped back in January. The patent was filed: June 21, 2004, same number.

http://www.macobserver.com/columns/devilsadvocate/2006/20060125lookingglass.shtml


You beat the New scientist, shout about it! : )

Nobody's really sure what Apple's going to do with this tech, if anything.
I've even heard it suggested that it would be more appropriate as a way to
have multi-point sensitive touch screens for some kind of tablet Mac.

The first thing I thought of when I saw this, is that this would likely be
snapped up by those ad networks that display on LCD screens in public
places. Imagine digital displays that interact... something like what this
release is proposing: http://www.scala.com/news/lm3labs.html

It's not likely that Apple would license their new technology to outside
companies like LM3Labs or Scala (Windows-based) but it's a thought-provoking possibility nonetheless. Maybe with their media-centric userbase Apple
would one day want to make Keynote into a platform for signage.

stealth ? invisibility? your idea with the cube is not quite accurate. if one face displays what is in the back face, then yes, if you view the cube exactly from above one of the faces you can see the back face (with the displacement of the face). But what happen if you view the face from an angle... ? you still see the same image (which is the one seen from the camera sensors on the back face).. so you see, it's not just "edge effect".. the problem of invisibility via retransmition of light from one face to another is not that simple as you think it is..