“On May 30, 2013, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals Apple’s gaze detection technology,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“It should be noted that Apple’s current patent is a divisional patent which means that Apple is breaking this aspect of their 2008 parent patent out as an individual patent,” Purcher reports. “Technically, Apple had this technology in a patent prior to any other competitor, including Samsung which actually implemented it first in their Galaxy S4 smartphone earlier this year.”
Purcher reports, “Apple also added gaze technologies to a January patent in context to an HDTV related patent and the likes of Sony and BlackBerry are working on similar features. Today, when you put your iPhone to your face the display is turned off. This is one of the technologies found in Apple’s gaze detection patent. In the future, gaze technology will be able to stop a video when you look away or stop your tunes from playing based on this gaze detection feature. At the end of the day, Apple’s gaze detection technology is really more about conserving power than it is about providing a flashy gimmick.”
Read more, and see Apple’s patent application illustrations and diagrams, in the full article here.
The slopes over at Shitsung steal stuff all the time anyway. The question is by the time the courts enforce Apple’s patent rights, the technology will be obsolete and the next Ice Age will have dawned on Earth, 20,000 years later.
Gaze Technology?
As long as I can turn it off.
Why would you want turn it off if it saves power?
Because you may be showing a video to a toddler and don’t want the video to pause when they look away.
Because the device may not detect whether you’ve just put on sunglasses or not.
Because you are watching a video with two people and you don’t want the video to stop when you look away.
There are countless reasons. This is ACTIVE power management. If it was passive power management, then it wouldn’t matter. However, anytime you take a large measure of control away from the user, you have to enable them to turn the feature off.
Gaze technology is so passé. Gimme mind control.
then you should join the Droids, Samsung is working hard on that now… its mind blowing too — lol
Good.
Goosungs feature that stops the video when you look away must be really irritating. You don’t sit glued to your screen all the time. It sounds like it would make sense but it is a really stupid feature.