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The Devil's Advocate - Apple Files for Chameleon Patent and Morph Trademark [TMO Scoop]
by - August 13th, 2004
Apple filed a patent application for an "Active enclosure for computing device" on February 6, 2004, which was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as US Patent Application No. 20040156192 on August 12, 2004. The application claims priority to earlier applications dating back to May 14, 1999. Duncan Kerr and Steve Hotelling are the inventors. The Abstract describes the invention:
A computing device is disclosed. The computing device includes a housing having an illuminable portion. The computing device also includes a light device disposed inside the housing. The light device is configured to illuminate the illuminable portion.
The patent goes on to describe how various Macintosh computers might be modified so that they can alter their physical appearance through blinky lights like a chameleon:
FIG. 1 is a simplified diagram of a chameleonic electronic device 10, in accordance with one embodiment of the invention. The word "chameleonic" refers to the fact that the electronic device 10 has the ability to alter its visual appearance.
Here, look at the pretty pictures:
Images from Apple's patent application.
It looks like the basic premise is to use red, green and blue LED's under a translucent case and light them up at different intensities to produce the various colors of the rainbow. We've heard of similar technology before, but this more recent application seems to be pushing the idea further.
An image from the application showing a control panel-like interface.
Apparently, you would be able to change your Mac's color to anything you like through a control panel. You can already change your wallpaper to suit your tastes, and this would let you do the same for your computer case.
At first blush this sounds like a lame computer version of the lava lamp:
In one embodiment, the illumination processing 600 mimics the colors appearing at the regions of the screen display to zones of the housing.
But in today's technology market, where fashion and expression are becoming ever more important, and as dorky as this invention may sound at first, this idea may well have legs. The ability to have a "mood ring" Mac, or the ability to tailor your computer to any décor would have a great deal of appeal. Look no further than the pink iPod mini to see that Apple can tap a greater demographic by merely altering the colors of a device.
The ability to achieve almost any color casing would seemingly have broad appeal and make the devices unique, while at the same time lower Apple's costs and inventory positions (i.e., with a single chameleon housing, there is no need to guess which colors to produce in what quantities).
The technology can do more than this, of course, and Apple notes how earlier computers were not able to give you feedback beyond the screen or speakers. Having your Mac glow orange when you receive an e-mail from your boss or flash red when there is a system error can be of use.
Considering this patent application claims priority back to 1999, it seems like Apple may have canned the idea. But here is where things may get interesting. On July 14, 2004, Apple filed for a trademark on a MORPH PAD in the UK. This apparently was filed for in the US on January 15, 2004 as application number 78-352718. It was filed in international classes 9, 15, and 42, which apply to the following areas:
9 - ELECTRICAL AND SCIENTIFIC APPARATUS Goods/Services COMPUTER HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE; COMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR USE IN AUTHORING, EDITING, SYNTHESIZING, ENCODING, DECODING, PLAYING, STORING AND ORGANIZING AUDIO DATA; ELECTRONIC MUSICAL SEQUENCERS AND SIGNAL PROCESSORS; ELECTRONIC TUNERS; ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT FOR THE INTERACTIVE AND DIRECT PROCESSING AND DISTRIBUTION OF AUDIO DATA; ELECTRONIC KEYBOARDS.
15 - MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS ELECTRONIC SYNTHESIZERS, ELECTRONIC PIANOS, ELECTRONIC RHYTHM MACHINES, MUSICAL KEYBOARDS.
42 - SCIENTIFIC, TECHNOLOGICAL AND LEGAL SERVICES DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR DIRECT PROCESSING, EDITING, ENCODING, DECODING, PLAYING, STORAGE, ORGANISING AND DISTRIBUTION OF AUDIO DATA.
"Morph" is a funny name. It in some ways reminds me of "pod." It's root is this kind of generic glob term allowing the device to do several things. I recall how strange the notion of a music device being called a pod seemed at first, but now it's an icon and a strong mark. A MorphPad may turn out to be just as strong a mark if the underlying device is equally flexible. But what kind of device is it anyway?
What is interesting about the MorphPad mark is when you combine that with the other design mark information uncovered by the fine folks at the Register, which hints of a mysterious tablet device (TMO's full coverage) -- then all of the sudden you have a movable, musical, and likely, video enabled tablet device that morphs. It may morph in what you use it for; it may morph in where you use it; and it may even morph in appearance. It may end up being a more media-centric version of the OQO transportable device.
Now it's not clear if there is any connection between Apple's chameleon computer Mac patent application and a device called a MorphPad. Just because the words morph and chameleon were used in recent trademark and patent filings by Apple doesn't mean there is some imminent connection. And just because the patent application notes that the technology may be used with most any type of computing device doesn't necessitate any relationship.
Honestly I doubt there is any more connection than the fact that I happened upon these two bits of information around the same time.
[Author's Addendum: And it seems like there isn't much connection between them. Apparently the Morph Pad is a musical interface technology introduced at NAMM as noted by one of our guests in the comment section.]
That being said, I have seen people customize their iBooks to glow different colors, and no doubt Apple could provide a much more refined implementation in a MorphPad if it were so inclined. The question is if this is something more than a few geeks would like?
My guess is if Apple produced a tasteful implementation, the market would eat-up a computer that could morph about in function and appearance. Having some morphable laptop/PDA device that can change appearances to suit people's fashion might not be that crazy. After all, if someone told you in 2000 that Apple was going to make an MP3 player with some PDA features in trendy colors, name it after a pod, and that it was going to result in today's iPod phenomena, well, you might have thought that was a bit flaky. Yet today the marketplace is demanding flexible and fashionable technology devices. Apparently, Apple has the means to meet such demands.
is an attorney. Please don't hold that against him. This work does not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of The Mac Observer, any third parties, or even John for that matter. No assertions of fact are being made, but rather the reader is simply asked to consider the possibilities.
You can send your comments directly to me, or you can also post your comments below.
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Observer Comments
Sat Aug 14, 2004 1:25 am Subject: I'D eat it up, I can tell you that much
I think a chameleonic iMac would be a hit with both neophytes and nerds. On the ond side, the obvious sex appeal would attract the more fashion-conscious. On the other side, the ability to program your computer's freakin' COLOR would provide geeks like me hours of amusement as we write programs to use this new ability in cool ways. Who could resist the sheer Cool Factor of such a feature?
I can already see a new generation of iTunes visualizers.
Sat Aug 14, 2004 2:03 pm Subject: Re: Craziness
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
You're an IT manager, looking across the vast expanse of computers in cubicles. You notice some machines are orange and one or two are red. Better get the techs to the red machines first to fix the problems before they move on to the orange ones. Leave the green ones be.
LOL!
"Dayum! Your computer is really RED today. Dude! What did you do?"
If you really want to be fancy, you make a LCD case with small cameras that look at the nearby environment and then adjust to blend in. A true chameleon computer. Visual stealth.
QuoteBiff wrote:
Wow they'll need one heck of a good lossless compression algorithm to stream your video signal wirelessly! Heck uncompressed video at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at a 60Hz refresh rate would need over 1.5Gb/s of throughput!
You really don't understand how your interface is displayed on your screen.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartzextreme/
I would guess thing more along the lines of.
http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/
Sat Aug 14, 2004 5:18 pm Subject: Re: At last the headless Mac?
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
Now if Apple had a display stand holding up a computer panel at the back of a detachable display, one scenario would be that a user could just take the display off and hang it on a wall for example, needing only airport express to power and stream movies and slideshows to the display from the panel stand.
This is actual a cool idea and something that I had wondered about. With some of that "pc media center" fad, maybe apple has decided to get in on it too. Like the post said, a detachable monitor that could be wall mounted, so when it's not being used as a computer, would be like a picture frame w/ slideshows or a monitor for movies, and all the keyboard/mouse type stuff could be small enough to hide away somewhere else. And of course the color changing thing would be freaking awesome.
Quoteennerseed wrote:QuoteBiff wrote:
Wow they'll need one heck of a good lossless compression algorithm to stream your video signal wirelessly! Heck uncompressed video at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at a 60Hz refresh rate would need over 1.5Gb/s of throughput!
You really don't understand how your interface is displayed on your screen.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartzextreme/
I would guess thing more along the lines of.
http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/
Yeah dude seriously what are you talking about? You make a statement that I don't know what I am talking about, then you throw a couple of links and don't elaborate.
Quartz takes care of rendering your user interface. What does that have to do with the video signal? The video signal doesn't care what is being displyed, it only cares what resolution/color depth/refresh rate you are running at.
A wireless remote desktop client is completely different than a wireless video monitor. That's a thin client computer. Graphics performance sucks for things like Terminal Services and Remote Desktop. They just chuck screen shots across the network as best they can. They tried something like this in the Windows world. It was called the Mira. Based on its failure, I would have doubts about Apple rushing out to do the same thing. Sorry man.
QuoteGuest wrote:
See the link below, Morph Pad was a part of a UI
for one of technology previews Apple did at NAMM
in January.
http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAMM04/Content/Emagic/PR/Sculpture-Amp-UltraBeat.html
An addendum has been added with a link to the official Apple press release. It's way too much wishful thinking on my part. Thanks again for the tip Guest.
Slightly random: Have you guys heard of the camo technology used (or being developed, i don't know) in the military where fiberoptics are like, placed on or wrapped around an object/vehicle/person or whatever, and the cables take light from the back of the object and shoot it out the front, so the person is cloaked in an image of what's behind them. (If I'm way off on this, someone tell me, cuz I'm remembering this from a possibly crazy high school phyx teacher 4 years ago).
If they could do this with a computer, so that it appeared invisible, or that you could still look out your window, even if your computer is "in the way", that would be freaking awesome. </popular mechanics-themed daydream into the future!>
Mon Aug 16, 2004 12:36 pm Subject: Re: Mimetic polycarbon
Mon Aug 16, 2004 1:10 pm Subject: Re: Mimetic polycarbon
QuoteEngine Joe wrote:QuoteAnonymous wrote:
You are describing a suit from William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' novel from 1984. Maybe your physics teacher was a fan?
Didn't they do this with Bond's car in Die Another Day, too?
Yea, I think it sounded like the thing with Bond's car. And as for the book, I have no idea, but I clearly remember him talking about it in reference to military camo...
Mon Aug 16, 2004 3:24 pm Subject: I'd like changeable lights
I think the changeable light colour is a good idea. It can appeal to the fashionable - I can see bloggers having their Mac colour on their posts - and a few uses spring to mind:
How about a traffic monitor - you put in your route to work, and in the morning your Mac is red if the route is blocked, or green if everything is clear.
Linking in to games - a first person shooter can blink the computer red when you get shot, or gradually turn more and more red when your health goes down. An RPG could give you hints about the area linked to context-dependent music - a soothing colour when the area is safe, a dark colour when it starts getting dangerous.
I can see people wanting an app to track through the day - going through a sunrise, yellow day through to a sunset and down to black, or whatever the neutral colour is.
Given the window you can reveal in the G5, I suppose it's no surprise Apple are investigating other areas of case modding. I think if a computer comes as standard with controllable lights, some of the applications that come out to use the lights will be more interesting than the hacks you get when people are adding lights to their own box. Knowing the lights are there gives the developers another interface element to use, as long as you can over-ride what individual applications want to do, I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with.
here's a slashdot article as well (links to a bbc news article):
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/14/2252247
Mon Aug 16, 2004 9:01 pm Subject: camo with light
I saw something about this a few years ago on The History Channel or some such show.
During WWII the USA experimented with a row a lights of across the leading edge of an aircraft wing. During daytime the lights were adjusted to closely match the intensity of the background sky, this made the aircraft very difficult to detect by sight from someone ahead of the flight path. As the aircraft got close the lighting trick would not no longer work, but by then the enemy was caught by surprise. It was to be used by patrol aircraft to search for submarines on the surface. If I remember correctly improvements in radar made the technology unnecessary.
Quotespxyu02 wrote:
Slightly random: Have you guys heard of the camo technology used (or being developed, i don't know) in the military where fiberoptics are like, placed on or wrapped around an object/vehicle/person or whatever, and the cables take light from the back of the object and shoot it out the front, so the person is cloaked in an image of what's behind them. (If I'm way off on this, someone tell me, cuz I'm remembering this from a possibly crazy high school phyx teacher 4 years ago).
If they could do this with a computer, so that it appeared invisible, or that you could still look out your window, even if your computer is "in the way", that would be freaking awesome. </popular mechanics-themed daydream into the future!>
Mon Aug 16, 2004 11:00 pm Subject: Re: Chameleon case not what Apple intended
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
I don't know where the idea came from that the pictures in the patent indicate that Apple ever intended for the whole case to change color, though that might be interesting (or cheesy, or both)--it clearly shows that a small cluster of LEDs would be used to generate a status color panel at a specific spot on the Mac's case. Using LEDs to change the whole case's color could be done, with the proper plastics to pick up and transfer the light throughout the plastic case--this might be cheaper than the alternative, which would be to coat the inside of a translucent case with a layer of organic LEDs, which is a technology starting to gather steam (some cell phone displays use color organic LED display panels), but it's expensive right now.
Isn't that sorta what the power ring on the iBook does? Changes color based on the state of the charge.
Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:01 am Subject: It's just a patent for what you see on your Mac, today!