News tagged ‘patent’

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) just released a large document detailing "Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics".  There are lots and lots of information in this patent (#20080174570) but only one particular section that really caught my eye.  It has to do with one feature many of us have been wishing for on the iPhone --- support for Flash content.

The content from this patent doesn't say whether Apple will add support for Flash to future versions of iPhone OS 2.0, but it does tell us that Apple has most definitely considered it.  And as an added bonus, we may even see native support for Windows Media content.

[0778]FIGS. 40A-40F illustrate exemplary user interfaces for playing an item of inline multimedia content in accordance with some embodiments.

[0779]In some embodiments, user interfaces 4000A-4000F include the following elements, or a subset or superset thereof: [0780]402, 404, 406, 3902, 3906, 3910, 3912, 3918, 3920, 3922, as described above; [0781]inline multimedia content 4002, such as QuickTime content (4002-1), Windows Media content (4002-2), or Flash content (4002-3);

via iphonebuzz

Apple recently filed a new patent application (us20080122796ki). On more than 370 pages lots of new potential features and enhancements for IPhone’s hardware and software are described.

The most interesting Hardware part is a GPS receiver and a camera for video conferencing.

On a software level, Apple describes addition of a text messaging (chat), in-line multimedia content (Quicktime and Flash) in the Safari browser. Further welcome additions described in the publication would include a dedicated blogging client, Java software downloads, MMS picture and video messaging, support for voice-activated commands, audio capture, video conferencing and more.

“[0142]Examples of other applications 136 that may be stored in memory 102 include other word processing applications, JAVA-enabled applications, encryption, digital rights management, voice recognition, and voice replication. ”

It sounds like Apple wants Java to be on the IPhone