Every time Steve Jobs sneezes, the blogosphere gets a cookie, or so it seems. People who love Macs get truly excited about the smallest things. Remember how pumped the Apple rumor mill got about that shipping label not too long ago? Well, patent filings are no different.

Each time Apple files a patent filing, the Apple blogs erupt with rumor and speculation. Are the products going to change? Is there a newer, shinier, “Mac”-ier object coming down the pipe? Will this new gadget change the computer industry?

Heck, I’m as much of a Mac fangrl as anyone, but sometimes I wonder if there is any point to the rumor posts, even as I write them. There comes a point in time where it is hard to get excited about each little thing. Look at how underwhelming the WWDC keynote was this year. Trying to sustain such a high level of energy and excitement for so long can wear on a company, and Apple is not exempt from that.

This weeks rumor mill has been chewing over six patents Apple received. So far, speculation has been tame, possibly because they seem small in scope. The patents included an iPod-shuffle style remote control device, a lanyard (when I think of lanyards I think of summer camp, so this one sounded odd to me), two separate designs for new iPod shuffle looks, and a technology patent.

The technology patent was the most interesting to me. It is for producing smooth motion compensated frames by combing multiple interpolation results. I’m always interested when Apple creates a patent for new technology ideas - those often actually do lead to new products or new generations and more interesting and functional variations of old products.

Apple also trademarked the MacBook Air in Europe (or rather, filed for trademark), and filed a patent for a new external device that would be compatible with their Time Capsule software. That might be interesting, considering I don’t use their Time Capsule software right now due to its tendency to take over your external drive and erase any data you want saved that isn’t part of the back up.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 9:45 am under Announcements, Apple, Macbook Air.  Print This Post

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