The USPTO has published a list of patents that was granted to Apple today. The patent list include – User interface for media playback, Real-time or near real-time streaming with compressed playlists, Multipoint touch surface controller and Data parallel computing on multiple processors.
User interface for media playback
8,281,244
Patent Background
Even as computer processors are becoming faster and programs more capable, space on computer displays continues to be limited. As programs become more complex there is a need to display more information in the same limited space.
Displaying additional information is not the only challenge; program application developers are also challenged to present information in a visually appealing and easily useable way. Lists and icons have long been key elements in achieving these objectives, but while they represent simple ways to present information, they are not sufficiently appealing to consumers and fail to convey enough information to a user. Early lists using icons represented items in a list with a generic icon and a descriptive name, a file name. The generic icons conveyed very little information; usually they represented a filing folder in place of a directory folder and a file type for a file.
Today, lists and icons have come further. Commonly, icons display information specific to a particular file, rather than a group of files opened by the same application. These icons are commonly referred to as representing a snap shot of the contents of the actual file. However, to fit the icons into a conventional list they must be very small. Therefore, while these icons are capable of displaying much more information than their predecessors, sometimes they fail to do even that because they are so small that it is difficult to discern any useful information at all.
To solve this problem, new graphical user interfaces have been created which show lists with much larger icons. The tradeoff is that fewer items in the list are displayed. In one example, a list is displayed as a sort of Rolodex, as seen in FIG. 1. In this example the icons are sufficiently large so that they are easy to see and they successfully convey detailed information about the individual file, but the list as a whole displays less information. The interface allows a user to see detailed information about a selected file and some information about one to two files before and after the selected file. It does not display much, if any information about the other files in the list. Accordingly a method for displaying a list with a large number of icons of a sufficient size to be capable of conveying detailed information about each file and the list as a whole is needed.
The Invention
Additional features and advantages of the concepts disclosed herein are set forth in the description which follows, and in part may be apparent to a person of ordinary skill based on the description, or may be learned by practice of the described technologies. The features and advantages of the concepts may be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and other features of the described technologies will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, or may be learned by the practice of the disclosed concepts as set forth herein.
The present disclosure describes methods and arrangements for manipulating a playlist by providing a graphical user interface in the form of a receding spiral made up of a collection of icons representing media items in the playlist having an icon in the center of the spiral representing the entire playlist. By way of selecting and dragging a representation of a media item or playlist into the center of the receding spiral, a new receding spiral based on the media item or playlist currently in the center of the spiral is created and displayed.
Real-time or near real-time streaming with compressed playlists
8,280,863
Patent Background
Streaming of content generally refers to multimedia content that is constantly transmitted from a server device and received by a client device. The content is usually presented to an end-user while it is being delivered by the streaming server. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than to the medium itself.
Current streaming services generally require specialized servers to distribute “live” content to end users. In any large scale deployment, this can lead to great cost, and requires specialized skills to set up and run. This results in a less than desirable library of content available for streaming.
The Invention
Methods and apparatuses provide real-time or near real-time streaming of content using transfer protocols such as an HTTP compliant protocol. In one embodiment, a method includes providing a request for a playlist file (e.g. an updated playlist) and specifying a compression protocol with or for the request; the request can come from a client device which is requesting the playlist from a web server. The web server can provide the playlist in a compressed format.
Multipoint touch surface controller
8,279,180
A multipoint touch surface controller is disclosed herein. The controller includes an integrated circuit including output circuitry for driving a capacitive multi-touch sensor and input circuitry for reading the sensor. Also disclosed herein are various noise rejection and dynamic range enhancement techniques that permit the controller to be used with various sensors in various conditions without reconfiguring hardware.
Data parallel computing on multiple processors
8,276,164
A method and an apparatus that allocate one or more physical compute devices such as CPUs or GPUs attached to a host processing unit running an application for executing one or more threads of the application are described. The allocation may be based on data representing a processing capability requirement from the application for executing an executable in the one or more threads. A compute device identifier may be associated with the allocated physical compute devices to schedule and execute the executable in the one or more threads concurrently in one or more of the allocated physical compute devices concurrently.
Source: USPTO
