Apple seeks patent for 'innovation' resembling the ZX Spectrum, C64 and rPi 400 Apple has filed a patent application for a device that – wait for it – has the computer and the keyboard all in one unit. Mind. Blowing. Except for one thing: isn't that what all computers used to look like? US Patent Application 20220057845 describes a "computer in an input device", which is but one way of visualising this …
Ah, the Spectrum+ 48K? Had one myself. Got it for Christmas '84, and it cost £179.99, unless my increasingly elderly braincells mislead me.
(Edit: Just checked wikipedia. I was out by £0.04, but correct on the year - apparently, it came out in October of '84.)
Coincidentally, or not, I have backed the second release of the ZX Spectrum Next on Kickstarter. And recently bought myself an rPi 400. Guess I'm intrinsically drawn to this form-factor that Apple has just invented.
Yes, I was selling these early computers in a branch of John Lewis at the time.
Acorn Electron (mine had a weird yellow terminal screen that had no case on, just a frame, everything exposed).
BBC Micro 128 (I think), it looked flash with multi-coloured keys though I don't remember many selling
Commodore 64 - hot cakes
Atari (cannot remember the model, again very popular
ZX Spectrum, smaller than the others and I recall the keyboards on one model giving issues.
Then the multitude of games, all on cassette.......
> Ah, the Spectrum+ 48K? Had one myself. Got it for Christmas '84, and it cost £179.99, unless my increasingly elderly braincells mislead me.
Not necessarily. I pictured the DK'tronics keyboard we had (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1000123/Hardware/DKTronics_Keyboard or something not unlike it), which you placed the Speccy motherboard inside and connected via the original's internal ribbon connector socket.
With ours, the original PCB occupied perhaps a quarter of the internal footprint, and the ports were exposed to the outside world via appropriately-spaced holes. The relatively thick plastic (and occasionally the height, for things with an open-square bracket profile like the Kempston joystick adapter) of the new case made some peripherals hard to connect depending on their shape, which I suspect is what they're getting at with the "DK Microdrive compatible" claim.
I had a dk tronics keyboard too, mostly because i'd hammered the grey one to death. The "real" keyboard was significantly better.
The peripherals not plugging in was a problem easily solved. Anytime I wanted to use my mate's specdrum, I just took the keyboard part of it off. By design (or fluke) the cable was long enough for the keyboard to be plugged in and usable but not actually in its proper place.
One of the nice things about the dktronics one was the power brick could be fitted inside the unit, which was much neater than having it on the floor.
I had an original Spectrum that I’d taken to a well dodgy place in Manc that put the internals into a + body/keyboard. I bet some here did that with their own hands. WTF are Apple thinking? Even if this is an M1 Mac inside a Magic Keyboard, there is no way this is a valid patent. What drugs are they on?
Short answer Capitalism.
Longer answer, insane patent law that makes it easier for large monopolies to dominate than for small innovators to make a change.
So patenting anything and sueing others for using it is a profitable move, for the company and for the lawyers.
Especially when those evaluating said patents won't be able to check everything.
My first "real" PC, around 1988, was a Durango F-85 (as seen here), complete with built-in daisywheel printer, dual 5¼" floppies, and keyboard. The monitor was separate, so I suppose technically it qualifies as a system-in-keyboard computer like this patent. All 6 tons of it.
Never did find a boot disk for the thing, so it just took up (a lot of) space and clicked, clunked, dimmed the room lights, whirred and displayed a flashing cursor when I powered it on. I'd been told it needed a CP/M boot disk, but reading the above link it turns out it used its own proprietary OS - I never stood a chance of obtaining one in those pre-Internet days! (OK, pedants... pre-pervasive Internet...)
Prior to Sinclair, even his first ZX80, there was the TRS-80 Model 1 and the Apple ][, both released in 1977. The Wikipediathingy will probably give exact dates and I'm not including the Commodore PET as that had a screen built in too. Both the Apple ][ and TRS-80 were the first mass market computers and both exactly fit the patent description and were sold pre-built. There were other, some released sooner, but were not really mass market and most were either in kit-form or the case was an optional extra :-)
Yeah, if they let them Apple wil patent even pizza boxes and no I am not kidding.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/16/that-one-time-apple-patented-pizza-box
That by the way is the same design previously used in plastic containers for cakes and similar food stuff, but apparently is possible to patent anything even if it already exists and you did not invent it.
My Sony Trinitron, c1997 or so was certainly not the first of their models to be capable of displaying 50/60Hz and PAL/NTSC/SECAM.
And while my LG TV now says it'd be quite happy with anything from 24Hz upwards, any colour format and even has a tuner capable of VHF as well as UHF, it really doesn't like VHS. There's something about the slightly wobbly signal, even from my (when it was new) high-end S-VHS recorder that it just can't lock to. I had to resurrect an old "video editor" which had a digital framestore & timebase corrector.
Progress?
The last TV I bought had precisely two HDMI sockets, one F-type, one "UHF aerial" type (I keep forgetting what they are called), one USB socket and a network socket. The network socket is a right pain when plugged in - plastering the startup screen with useless adverts, and there is no composite, no component, no SCART, no VGA, no analogue audio out, not even a 3.5mm headphone socket, though thankfully there is an optical digital audio out which means I can connect up a pair of external speakers because another thing we've lost to "progress" (i.e. thin TVs) is any pretence at worthwhile built-in loudspeakers. At least the old tube TVs had enough room for (say) a 6" x 3" elliptical with plenty of room to breathe and facing forwards for heaven's sake, not directly down into the table! This is just the kitchen TV, I really shouldn't have to be connecting it to a HiFi just to get intelligible sound.
</rant>
M.
There are some remarkably decent tiny speakers available on the market these days which sound very good for their size compared to much larger cardboard cone speakers of yesteryear. But they still need to be mounted properly and, in the case of modern TVs, actually installed and properly placed into the device instead of the shitty ones they actually use that seem to be loosely fitted into any leftover space in the case.
I'm sure there are, but with speakers size is (nearly) everything, and all the "tricks" used to make small speakers sound big come with compromises, from the horrid EQ Bose needs to deal with their resonant cavities (and the resulting "missing" parts you only notice when listening on a more conventional system) to drivers which sound great from 4ft away at moderate volumes, but absolutely awful on the other side of the kitchen with the volume turned up enough to be heard over the bubbling chip fat or the Kenwood Chef.
I wouldn't have fancied mounting my Trinitron on the kitchen wall, but even my wife's old 14" JVC put out better sound from its single 4" speaker than most LCDs I've heard recently!
M.
I loved the way the red shirts saturated the screen.
some of the red saturation may have been caused by the physics of the older TV picture tubes. Red phosphors were not as bright so you had to turn the electron gun up to 11 to get any brightness in the red range. As such, a really bright red would too easily saturate. It was a compromise of screens that were too dim to begin with and extending the life of the picture tube beyond the warranty period. Go fig, right?
(I have seen this happen with cheap TVs made in the 90's, too)
I'm a Contract PM and have a nice home office set up which has worked with every client I've worked with over the past 4 or 5 years. I suspect most of us who regularly work at home have something similar.
I use a desktop docking station with a USB connection to whichever laptop I'm currently using. That connects up to the dual screen set up, wireless keyboard and mouse, webcam, sound system etc.
It gives me a nice desktop space and an HD / HiFi set up for video calls
Whilst the dock is a Toshiba device the fact it uses display link drivers means that all the major laptop vendors have them included in their builds for their own 'universal' docking station. I've only had one issue where the helpful build engineers had removed all the 'extraneous' drivers from the build but that was fixed by a quick google search for the Dell docking station which included the display link drivers and a call to the clients service desk to have them installed off we went.
The proposed apple device adds nothing to this set up and would actually complicate things probably at increased cost
I suspect it will be optionally wirelessly connected to a screen too so effectively its a laptop with a big external screen
If it has USB-C (or whatever) it needn't be wireless, use the cable to connect directly to a "screen with built-in docking station" (see what I did there?) Instant display with additional connectivity on the display unit itself which also, of course, powers the computer. Yours for an additional £2,995.
Wireless mouse, this being Apple. Oh, optional wireless mouse. For £299.
But the "laptop without a screen" idea is, basically, just an RPi400 with a bit more money thrown at it.
M.
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Yes, it was a joke. I was trolling "for teh lulz" as I believe the kids say, when they're not listening to their popular beat combos and hanging out in their depraved coffee bars with their "bobby-socks".
Now, gather round and pay attention as I deign to share my opinion on the absolute superiority of vi over emacs, or was it the other way around...
Upvote for the Oric 1 mention, it always seems to get forgotten. My first computer, because it seemed a great deal. 64kb of RAM (of course it wasn't mentioned the top 16k is normally hidden under the ROM) and a non-chicklet keyboard (but actually the keys were similar to the ones in calculators, not great for typing). Also introduced the joys of working around unfixable bugs in the built-in BASIC. A great learning experience!
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I am sure. The 16k and 64k versions were released at the same time. I bought my 64k version (which as noted, actually had only 48k available to the user) from a Finnish importer in 1983. The Oric Atmos was released a year later, and I was pretty pissed because it was clearly superior: Had a proper keyboard and a bug-fixed ROM. What the Oric 1 should have been originally.
Hark the Oric angels sing
Join we in an oval ring
SHOOT, EXPLODE then ZAP and PING
Hark the Oric angels sing
Why can I remember a winning entry from a Personal Computer News christmas carol contest from the best part of 40 years ago, but I can't remember what colour bin to put out this week?
I didn't see the Jupiter Ace mentioned.
Whoever thought kids would appreciate a computer based on FORTH?
M.
Those of us who first learned BASIC would proably be better programmers if we had learned FORTH instead.
Another computer not mentioned, was the one I had before the Atari ST, the Grundy Newbrain. A nice machine in many ways, but I remember it most fondly for its superb build quality.
380Z - first desktop at my school, prior to that you had to go a PDP 11/70 at a nearby polytechnic! All I can, very vaguely, remember is that BASIC loaded from a cassette and resided in memory. One hex editor later and even us barely ZX80/81 literate youths were changing error messages for "syntax error" to "[fumble-fingered-teacher] error" and redirecting "run" to "new". We were the barely technical kids, guy in the year above us did something irreparable to (I think) the user profiles on the polytechnic PDP - Legend!
Yes, but that's the point of the other systems mentioned. The processor was in the keyboard for the 480Z. That wasn't the case for the 380Z, which IIRC was an S100 bus based system. The processor, storage, graphics card et. al. were in the big black box, and the keyboard was... just a keyboard.
And I'm sure it wasn't the first 3 box design, either, and although it could classed as a personal computer as defined in the late '70s and early '80s, it sure as hell wasn't an IBM PC.
In the 1980s the local TV shop was selling something called "Micro Professor"(??). A nice small device - ideal for using as a disco lights controller with its development done on an Apple ][. They were basically a total Apple clone. Bought a couple at fire sale prices when Apple sued the manufacturer.
The Micro Professor I've met was nothing like an Apple ][. It had a Z80, not a 6502 and was definitely for "enthusiasts". I managed to buy a MP printer from somewhere like Greenweld or Cricklewood many years ago, and it certainly isn't a plug-and-play device. The manual goes into great detail about how exactly to bit-bang the interface to make the thing work.
M.
The Philips Maestro had a lot of functionality built into the keyboard unit, to the point that it cause all manner of grief when your colleague dumped a litre of orange juice into theirs.
The last time I saw one it was stuck to the wall of the cabin of Starbug in Red Dwarf.
Ah yes, playing "spot the item glued to the walls and spray-painted to look future-y" was always fun when watching Red Dwarf. Pretty sure I saw an Amiga keyboard or two and what was possibly the instrument cluster shroud from a Ford Escort there in many of the early episodes.
And much of the "computer" stuff was Amiga based too, such as the terminal Lister was using when Kryten's detached eyeball scuttled up his boxer shorts (long story. Watch the episode. Or "just buy a potion from Gandalf the master wizard! That's what I usually do!").
(Edit: Holy crap. That episode was 1992?? Blimey.)
It's a quirk of the US patent system that you can apply for, and receive, a patent, WITHOUT any prior art checks.
It's then down to anyone who feels their Intellectual Property is damaged by the new patent, (eg current owners of existing patents for virtually the same thing) to defend themselves.
In a situation where there is no virtually similar patent (but lots and lots of prior art), the IP legalese becomes ... 'muddy'.
What else would you expect from a system written by lawyers...
In the US, the only prior art by a US company which is still surving is Apple so they can patent it and troll everyone else from abroad, the RPi foundation included.
Wouldn't do for schools to have a cheap education computer in the US when they could have an expensive education appliance from Apple.
The US patent office will probably just rubber stamp this as they do seem utterly useless. Then Apple can go after someone who infringes on it, knowing perfectly well that prior art exists even in their own product lines from 30 years ago. But if the infringing part is a small fry such as a kickstarter campaign without the money to pay for the lawyer to challenge it in court, its still a win for Apple.
"But if the infringing part is a small fry such as a kickstarter campaign without the money to pay for the lawyer to challenge it in court, its still a win for Apple."
They'll be able to finance it by selling tickets to the hearing. I can imagine the defence showing the Apple witness one ancient all in one box after another and asking them how Apple's patent is sufficiently different that this isn't prior art.
If they argued that, it would fail just the same. They would have to have patented it then to claim ownership. If they did that, protection would have expired in 1997 and anyone could copy it. So that would be a fun argument to watch them play out.
The US Patent office wouldn't recognise a novel idea if it jumped up and bit the end of their collective *****. When is the USA going to recognise the difference between an idea (patent) and a design (copyright)? The patent will be worthless as it will never stand up in court, but that won't stop the Apple twonks from using it to bully other users of "their" design with their overpaid lawyers. I wonder if it will have rounded corners? <LOL>
"..and Steve's most astonishing invention - the colour black."
I think the Martin Marietta Corp might have a word or two to say about that.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4111762A/en
And those of a monotheistic religious persuasion might also wish to quarrel with Steve Jobs about it:
Book of Genesis
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Darkness=black ergo prior art.
Yeah - only about 15-20 years before Apple (surprise, surprise) copied the key design features.
Apple: Boldly claiming to invent that which has gone before, as apparently they think if Siri can't find the prior art, it doesn't exist. :D
Any laptop too.
And their attempt to claim "maybe this has been done before, but we've added something new!" is to say it can be more compact because of increasing miniaturisation is essentially the definition of obvious to someone familiar with the state of the art, or even just the general state of technology now. (And yes, the Spectrum ZX81 was essentially just big enough for its keyboard, Sinclair's talent was stripping things down to the bare essentials.)
If they want to play the miniaturisation game I'll point at the 2008 HTC G1 Android phone, currently sitting on my 'obsolete mobiles' shelf. Packing a QWERTY keyboard, rollerball, screen and undeniably it's a computer pretending to be a phone. About 115x55x20mm small.
And AFAIK not the earliest computer in that form factor, just a lot more computer like.
I present my colleague's laptop with broken screen as prior art. Folding input device with embedded computer and no display, wouldn't be the first time that's happened either.
In any case, patents are meant to be non-obvious: folding keyboards exist, computers in keyboards exist without displays exist, computers that fold exist, computers with keyboards that fold exist, and as mentioned, my colleagues computer without a display and which folds exists. No Nobel prizes are awaiting the person who removes a display or adds a hinge in exactly the same context that many already have.
That will be a Palm Pilot paired with the Targus Stowaway (folding) keyboard.
Obviously, the CPU is in the Palm and not the keyboard, but as others have pointed out, putting the CPU in the keyboard is obvious as evidenced by long standing prior art.
Likewise wireless connection between CPU and display. So on the evidence which ever way Apple tries to cut it, this 'invention' is obvious.
Firstly that is one possible embodiement of the claim, not the main claim itself.
Also given that there are computers embedded in key boards and folding keyboards combning the two is too obvious to deserve a patent.
Also, a quick search found this:
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/pipo-kb2-mini-pc-enclosed-in-folding-keyboard-19-04-2016/
That's nice! I was swapping out a system board on a laptop the other day and that board would almost be small enough to fit inside that folding case. The laptop was a full-fat Win10 device, 8GB RAM on board + a SoDIMM slot and NVMe SSD, decent enough for most everyday use cases, so the idea of something other than crappy little Chromebooks being built into that sort of form factor has already been superseded by the possibility of current mid-range full PC devices.
I'm going to give Apple the benefit of the doubt here.
I'm going to say that the people involved in this process, the designer, the accountants, the person/people who puts the patent together are just of an age where they don't remember such a thing being done.
You know, a bit like when Homer Simpson puts the legs on his chair to stop him falling over, thinking Edison had never had the same idea.
"... you use your computer plugged into a display at work, then fold it up and put it in your bag to take home. At home, you unfold it and plug the single wire into another display and Robert is your mother's brother."
I've got one exactly like that. That is - my old laptop with the dead screen...
If apple gets the patent and then sues Pi folks,... then yes, they may be a bit worried.
Retrospectively, they will sue commodore too for both vic20 and c64. All of sir Clive's work is sue-worthy too. They are all blatant copies of apple's intellectual property as all of history recognizes apple's superiority and, more importantly, timeless designs. Apple owns all designs throughout time because apple's designs are timeless. Physics is undeniably on apple's side. The law needs to acknowledge apple's superiority too. So it has been decided.
Nearly all the clients I deal with have shunted their users data to the cloud. Very little gets stored on the mobile/desk computer. So if your data is in the cloud, why do you need to take the computer home with you? Just use the one you have at home.
With the advances in the mobile phones these are now powerful enough to use as mobile computers (providing you have the right peripherals). Perhaps another reason why I can't see the point of Apples patent application.
Yes, but they still need a computer that is trusted to access that data. If the company has purchased laptops, the user just has to move that one to have an identical environment without needing a second computer. Most companies I've dealt with don't trust users' personal computers for the required access.
As for phones, I'd like that to be true, but the software often restricts the utility as a desktop device. I'm not only talking about things that require specialist software on the client, but also more normal office tasks. I have never seen a company attempt using phones in the role in which laptops and desktops are routinely employed.
As I understand Apple's concept, it's just a laptop without being useful when the user doesn't have desktop peripherals, which seems unhelpful to me. The only possible benefit I can see is if they were able to make the hinges work so well that the keyboard and all the computer components could be pocketed, thus making it more portable than a general laptop. I don't think that's happening, and even then it wouldn't be that useful.
That this is a thing is simply insanity. The volume of pre-existing work dwarfs any reasonable measure.
Instead of rules-lawyering perhaps Apple should concentrate on making good hardware and software. You know, those things that define why we want them. Acting like MS on a bad day is just going to bring them ire. Deservedly so.
At one point I used to take my CPC464 to university - had a monitor and printer at home, monitor and printer and interface cables for connection to other geeks' CP/M devices at university so I didn't have to cart big lumps home on the train. The hacked up dual external 3.5 flopppy was a bit of a brick though ...
"The computing device can include an air-moving apparatus to move air along an air flow pathway"
More prosaically, what the 3 modern day engineering visionaries who wrote this patent have invented is a standard iMac setup of monitor, keyboard and mouse, but one of them has had the flash of inspiration that said "hey, let's put all the computery bits in the keyboard instead of the monitor!".
Since a computer with just an input device is not much use since you need an output device to see your results I have invented a new computing device which has both an input device and an output device. Since it won't be big or heavy, it'll be something you can put on top of your lap whilst you having a coffee or on the train. Wonder what I shall call it. How does laptop sound?
Looking at claim 1, the key "inventive" component appears to be that the computer will only have one input/output port which will deliver power and input signals, and output signals from the "processing unit" (claim 1). As far as I can remember the Spectrum had separate power and TV-OUT connectors, so wouldn't be covered. Claims 2-12 depend on claim 1.
Claim 13 describes a Spectrum almost exactly, except that it includes a fan. Did the Spectrum have one, or just the big heatsink? Claims 14-16 depend on 13.
Claim 17 describes an all-in-one except that the base of the enclosure is the heatsink. Claims 18-20 depend on this.
I don't know about any of the other all-in-one designs mentioned in the article or comments, and my memory of the original Spectrum is a little hazy after all these years. Can anyone comment on them?
Are any of these differences "novel" or "inventive"? That will probably come down to a jury trial to decide. (In the USA patent trials are jury trials, rather than specialist courts.)
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Laptops have had docking stations for years which use one connection, so arguably (and profitably for lawyers...) claim 1 is invalid.
Speccies were fanless, I'm pretty sure. I don't recall fan noise from one and I had mine open periodically (I was that kind of kid....).
As for the heatsink, surely someone has used the enclosure as part of heat dissipation before?
The commenter above may have a killer counter-example to claims 1-12. If there were a mobile phone with a single output socket for power/data and a physical keyboard, then that would invalidate 1-12. It would need to be recent enough to only have the micro-USB/USB-C (no headphone socket) and old enough for a physical keyboard though. The last of the Blackberries?
No, patents aren't restrictive in that way, if you can use the device on the one port it doesn't matter that it has others that provide extra or duplicate functionality, this is why you can patent a device that's a refinement of an existing patent. So any device that can run from a USB-C port already fits it, hence the broken laptop example.
"Are any of these differences "novel" or "inventive"?"
IANAL, but I doubt it.
Claim 1? Modern mobile phones only have one port these days, since they did away with the headphone jack. So there's nothing innovative here (and, no, sticking it on a computer isn't innovation).
Claim 13? Might be a bit harder as, as has been pointed out, older kit didn't tend to run hot enough to require such things. The fans were often in the power supply and the hot parts (processor and video chip) tended to just have a heatsink. Hell, my old Pentium 75 box got away with just a big heatsink on the chip (my 2.4GHz Pentium has a tower block heatsink with a fan on both sides!). That said, can one really call adding a fan innovation given the result of not having forced cooling might be somewhat... unpleasant?
Claim 17? I've seen all sorts of weird and wonderful heatsink arrangements. Ever wondered why the metal sides of the S9 got so damn hot when the phone was busy? It's because it's metal, usefully doubles up as a heatsink. I'm not sure I've seen the base of a computer used as one, but I've certainly seen the base of printers and amplifiers used in that way. Tends to be where the voltage regulator and/or amp chip are bolted, if not to the back. It's probably more aesthetically pleasing to use the base as the heatsink (just as amps use the base and back) because those are the parts the user doesn't look at much. Same reason why all the I/O ports and crap are "around the back" out of sight.
Willing to bet that the Z88 will be more productive than this crApple thing...
Plus, you need to travel and work? Z88 got you covered...
Power failure? No sweat, Z88 got you covered there as well.
Want to avoid constant interruptions like antivirus popping up, windowsupdates popping up, system updates borking the system etc etc? Z88 also got you covered there.
One of the most useful things I ever had was a Psion 3a organiser. Simple easy to use database, word processor, diary, and had a BASIC-like language to let you make custom apps. Some internal memory, along with plug in memory packs. Oh, and it ran for ages off two AA cells, and had a little CR20xx inside to keep things going whilst the batteries were changed. Not to mention a small but remarkably nice keyboard.
"A computing device can include an enclosure that defines an internal volume and an external surface"
As far as I'm aware, with the exception of the Klein bottle all enclosures have an internal volume and an external surface. This would appear therefore to be prior art.
Just the usual snarky comments, as should be expected. Anyone noticed that _nobody_ is building a device like this right now?
I just got a new monitor with USB-C, I could plug in this keyboard and a mouse and be done. Perfect for shared workspaces, just unplug it when you leave then plug in where you sit the next morning. Seems a good idea. Downside: No battery. Unplug the USB-C cable and you have a brutal shutdown.
But really I’d want to be able to get a keyboard, mouse and monitor of my choice. I’d shrink the macmini as far as possible, add something so I can attach it to the back of my monitor with the shortest possible cable, and add a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Monitor from £120 to £500, and you save a good amount compared to an iMac.
Nobody building it, fine, if there's a gap in the market they want to try they're welcome. The ridicule is for the fact that they think this could be patented and that they might even get away with doing so.
Anyway, if you think anything new Apple creates is intended to save you money I've got an IBridge to sell you.
"Anyone noticed that _nobody_ is building a device like this right now?"
I know of a few places making such things. Running Mac OS, no, but the hardware exists. However, you've asked for a different product so you can bring your own keyboard, and there are lots of those. Tons of small desktops exist out there. Depending on exactly how small you want them, you can quite easily get ones that mount onto the back of a screen and have Intel or AMD processors sufficient to run Windows or Linux with pretty good speed for average workloads. There are even a few computers still using the form factor of the old Intel ComputeStick, but I wouldn't recommend them.
Apple can build a computer in any shape they like. It won't make it patent-worthy, and if it's what you've asked for or what their claims appear to describe, it won't be something otherwise unobtainable.
"I’d shrink the macmini as far as possible, add something so I can attach it to the back of my monitor with the shortest possible cable,"
That's already been done. There's plenty of examples of comupters that mount onto the VESA screw mounts on the back of a monitor/TV already. They've been out for years. Likewise, custom monitor stands that take a standard VESA m ount screen on the front and a small PC on the back. There's a Raspbery PI in a VESA case running Kodi attached to the VESA screw mounts of my TV right now.
Can't people see it ? This is a completely new invention.
All former works has had a frame or something making the computer define the desktop space needed.
This is completely different, here it is the desktop space of the keyboard that limits the computer size.
I still have my ZX81, it had like 40% of the desktop area behind/above the keyboard. That could be saved with the new Apple patent.
This is new true magic :-)
When I saw that classic wedge shape I had to look at the diagram twice just to check it was not a total copy of a diagram of the Acorn Atom.
US patents are just an embarrassment - on a par with the UK PM (Out of balance, to show I'm aware lots of UK stuff is shit too, just like some US stuff is good .. just not patents, ever)
Camera out and take a nice photo of my Memotech MTX500 for them
Keyboard* on top(input device), computer inside casing, nice rounded corners, and a host of connectors out the back (and side) (and inside for RS232/HDD card)
*Note : Best damn keyboard I've ever used, nice clicky keys, nice action, all on a decent 1mm ally plate thats part of the casing.. no bounce, no dead feel(like this keyboard) and you can touch type/hammer away to your hearts content knowing the keys wont stick/bounce/fail like this crummy thing thats on top of a rubber membrane
The first "computing device" I owned was a Superboard, a single board computer that had a full size keyboard as part of the PCB assembly. I got it in the late 70s. It was the way all computers were made prior to the PC which (I'd guess) used a separate keyboard because IBM already had a product line in standalone keyboards.
(Wasn't it Tandy who marketed what looked like a standalone keyboard but was actually a complete computer?)
You can't patent an idea, only an implementation of a particular idea. Even if there had never been a "computer in keyboard" before, if Apple successfully patented it it wouldn't prevent Microsoft or Dell from patenting their own take on a computer in a keyboard. For the same reason there wasn't a 17 year long monopoly where only one company was allowed a sell a "laptop".
In your patent you describe how your particular embodiment of an idea operates. You can describe other potential ways to accomplish the same thing, but you can't possibly close out all possible avenues for something this general. If (to pick a really crazy scenario that everyone would agree would be something completely new) Apple had put chips making up the "computer" inside the individual keys instead of being on a motherboard, despite being something new that "idea" couldn't be patented.
They could only describe how they accomplished it by describing the connection from the chips in the keys to the other chips in the other keys worked in a mechanical and electrical sense, and details like putting the biggest chip inside an oversized "enter" key. They could describe other methods to do the same thing, but only those particular embodiments of the idea would be patent protected. Someone else could come along and do that same thing differently, or better, and also patent a "computer in keyboard" with chips in the individual keys.
Okay, so I read the patent, which was rough going, because it's tediously written even by the standards of patent applications.
I came away from it with the strong feeling that they are NOT actually talking about a computer built into a keyboard, and the diagrams they included are perhaps clever misdirection.
I mean, yes, they do talk about keyboards in the body of the application and they also show diagrams of keyboards. But a lot of the actual claims, the meat of the application, don't say computer, they say "computing device," "made of composites or aluminum," "with input capabilities," "foldable into two or three sections."
That sounds like...
...smart glasses?
Read the patent application thinking "smart glasses" and not "Commodore 64" and see if it makes sense to you all, too. I wonder, is Apple getting cagy with the language of their patent applications, since those have in the past often tipped their hand about what they're up to?
I mean, I could be wrong, but it's hard to read that application and not see it that way.
On that basis, it could as well be a folding phone. In fact, it's probably more likely to be talking about that because the phone mostly has input devices on the outside (touchscreen, cameras). Smart glasses, while they may also have cameras, will need a lot more effort put into the output devices (screen that is easily seen by the wearer without distracting from the environment, same for audio because most glasses don't go over the best areas for bone conduction). I'm not sure how much you can outright lie about what your product is before a patent doesn't apply to it, but as none of these three concepts is patent-worthy anyway (the Pi 400, many Android folding phones, and Google Glass respectively as prior art), it probably doesn't matter that much to them.
I like the way you think, though.
Lots of patent applications are put in just to see if they will be granted. In the US, the price to challenge or defend a patent starts at around $300,000 and may have gone up without me noticing. If a company such as Apple goes after you for a patent infringement for something you've created, their patent might be laughably undeserved but you probably won't have the money to defend yourself and just have to abandon your project.
When Elon Musk donated a bunch of Tesla patents to the public domain, I had a look at some of them. Junk. Every one I looked at was so outrageously preceded that I was amazed that the patent examiners passed on them. I think the company realized this too and used them as a big PR piece. Contrary to what some fans thing, Tesla did not open-source all of their patents and has been filing applications for new inventions that they are going to keep under their control. For an automotive oriented patent, the likely opposition would be from another large auto maker that has their own legal team and disputes would be very expensive. At least in the US, you can't pick and choose which infringers you go after. If you go after several small companies and ignore a big one that would be tough/expensive to pursue, the courts will nullify the patent.
I wonder why Apple would spend the money on this patent. Computers are stuffed into so many things these days that yet another form factor isn't unique enough to deserve a patent.
"I wonder why Apple would spend the money on this patent. Computers are stuffed into so many things these days that yet another form factor isn't unique enough to deserve a patent."
I wonder if this was meant to be a Design Patent from the coloured pencil department that accidentally got sent to the wrong department and some legal eagle tried to bastardise it into a proper patent while muttering about "bloody stupid engineers"?
So, how does this work in the real world? Were the original 'innovations' not patented so now Apple takes out a patent and can now sue retrospectively?
Never understood how this stuff works.
Certainly, both my Amiga 500 and 1200 beg to differ that Apple is being innovative. Not sure if I still have my C64.
My coat has a dust rag in the pocket ---->
A patent for the wheel, sorry a "circular transportation device", was granted, to Australian, John Keogh, in May 2001, so why not file an application for a: 1977, Apple II, 1980, Commodore Vic-20, 1980, Sinclair ZX-80, ... in 2022. If you don't ask you don't get.
FYI: John's patent was later invalidated, as apparently some prior art was discovered.
Well if you look at the actual document's claims they take the usual US approach of throwing in the kitchen sink into the application in the expectation that they will be whittled down to the actual innovative meat by the examiner. The actual claimed innovation is probably to do with design for cooling and appears from claim 13 onwards. Even then it looks pretty obvious.
Everybody talks about the Commodore 64!
But what about the Exidy Sorcerer - which may have been the first computer inside a keyboard?
Or the "Zero-Footprint PC" from Cybernet that put a real computer - from an MMX 233 in their earliest model in 1999 to a Pentium 4 in their last model in 2007 - inside a keyboard?
Toshiba Libretto (My bet is Japan has plenty of prior art).
IBM Dauphin, original TRS80's mentioned.
Hitachi Peach and something from Rockwell USA and I consider Nokia phones with the sliding keyboard to be a computer, as you could also program it. Before that IT programmable calculators. Many had IR ports to 'communicate' as well.
As for Keyboards, the 1970 ones from ICL were 3 inches thick, 1mm pressed steel, as were NCR ones, that featured their own 24*80 terminal controllers with computers that optimally compressed packets for ATS and CICS transactions. (Remember those 300 baud handset modems).
Going back further, the German Enigma machine, and The British/Polish equivalent - some packed lighting indicators.
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