Apple patent foresees ultra-svelte iDevices Apple has filed a patent application for an audio port that accommodates a jack which is larger in diameter than the thickness of the device into which it's plugged. Published Thursday by the US Patent and Trademark Office, the filing, entitled "Low Profile Plug Receptacle", is a resurrected version of an essentially identical …
"A Means or Method to Listen to Audio or Other Media Players Less than 2 mm thick"
Method 1:
use smaller Jacks made from Metal or an Alloy of Metals or Any Other materials that is yet to be discovered that gets the job done"
Method 2: use in-line connectors
Method 3: use separate connectors and "poke" the device in more than one slot.
Method 4: use magnetic contacts
Method 5: use Velcro or any other adhesive like fastener
Method 6: Anything else i forgot to mention
Yes, you forgot to read the article:
"All three methods are designed to allow Apple to continue to use industry-standard jacks"
And you also forgot to mention wireless which would have been a better solution than all those mentioned, and would still let them stick to some existing standard (e.g. bluetooth).
using non-industry standard connectors and why they chase down all those nasty little Chinese companies who knock off connectors, with cables, for less than 50 cents each.
At least we can buy them in the Far East - the Home Security gang stop them from being imported to the U.S.A.
This "invention" is not only obvious, it's actually just how current jacks work.
The locking mechanism on a standard jack socket is a single sprung contact, and the other contacts resist the motion in parallel. Most standard jack sockets would still work perfectly well if you took a saw to them and cut off the top and bottom.
In fact, I have a vague recollection of a gimmicky "credit card" FM radio that worked this way....
"..an audio-plug socket that's smaller in diameter than the thickness of the device in which it would be used."
All the audio plugs and sockets that I use are smaller in diameter than the thickness of the devices that I plug them into. This sentence could do with some rewriting.
As for Apple's effort here; it's 'imaginative' but I wouldn't call it an invention; it's a particular design. Hey look, we made a cutout in the case with a matching cutaway in the socket so the plug body doesn't foul on entry!
I've just thought of a design that would allow protrusion of the plug body from both sides of the case. It uses thin steel rods that the plug displaces and is then held in place by as it's inserted. Can I have my patent please?
The original iPhone had that weird curved top to the 3.5mm socket which meant you had to use 3.5mm plugs with super-skinny plastic around the top (or Apple's horrible earbuds).
Well people hated that because they wanted to use their own headphones that may, or may not, have fat/right-angled plastic around the top of the plug.
3.5mm jacks are not going away any time soon, bluetooth or no bluetooth.
73
There are many systems where connectors are bigger in one or two dimensions than the unit that houses them. Remember the PC modems that stuck out of laptops and had a flip-up RJ-45 connector?
How dumb can the US Patent Office be. Maybe the new rules will put an end to this stupidity.
I like the Samsung offering on it's upcoming pad - a socket with an 'eyebrow' accommodating the protrusion. Class!
Once you put your iDevice in its mandatory bumper it loses most of its visual aesthetic appeal and all of its thinness anyway, so why bother putting the housing in the device at all. Then you can make an even thinner device that demos even better, but because the bumper keeps the phone the same size anyway you can carry on using a normal jack housing.
whilst I salute Apple for apparently trying to stick to standards, recognising most headphones have 3.5mm plugs and fining a way of incorporating them into a device, this should never have been granted a patent. It comes under the category of obvious. I reckon more than 50% of people would come up with at least one of these three methods given the same problem.
Also, what is Apples obsession with making things thin, less than 3.5mm is very thin. Why not just concentrate on making stuff lighter and more durable. The iphone is already plenty thin enough, make it much thinner and it will become really annoying to use as a phone.
Are they actually trying to patent a genuine device (if so, where is the physical example of such a device accompanying this application?) or simply a very generalised series of concepts intended as nothing more than a judicial minefield for any competitors in the field of consumer electronics? A clearer example of deliberate market poisoning would be hard to find. Apple make very good kit that is deservedly very popular but their taste for using their legal department to dream up schemes designed to cripple any future competition reminds me very strongly of Microsoft at its very worst in the 1990s.
I think this a case of patenting the bleeding obvious and has most likely been done before.
Next week they will try and patent sex, it's going to cost you an Apple Tax of £10 a poke, that is unless MS get there first in which case you will still pay £10 but you will need to reboot three or four times before you get going.
Putting aside the merits of of the patent, what are apple going to make the iDevices out of. If the case is thinner than the socket, you are going to be up against some issues with the stiffness of the material aren't you. What will stop an iDevice of iphone length/width bending or snapping if stuffed in your back pocket and sat on. Likewise the screen ? Or do apple have a way of growing diamonds the size of an iphone ?
If your Patent & Trademark Office approves upon this, something is seriously wrong? It must have been some device in the past that have been used that holds a thicker connector than what was ideal?
That is just a thickening of the device either permanently or by being flexible. It must have been done in a way before that would ruin this patent. It is a matter of finding it. If one think about all the stuff people put together that really not nicely fits together it most be some example out there to show how it has been done.
It can't be of anyones good in the long run to grant companies patent's like this. Where did the rules that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has to follow about what is innovative or unique enough come from? Or rather where did this destructively low level come from? This is what is in everybody's best, according to who?
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