“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 29 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple. “In this particular report we cover another fascinating PrimeSense patent that Apple has inherited that covers a 3D sensing device that works with distinct gestures that could control items on a display or TV.”
“The patent points to this invention working with items like music, movies and games which makes it a strong candidate for working with Apple’s iTunes on a Mac and with Apple TV’s menus,” Purcher reports. “In-Air gestures would allow a user to select an tune on iTunes to play or click on an icon to activate a channel like Netflix to open or select a movie or TV channel without the need of a remote control.”
Much more, including Apple’s patent application illustrations, in the full article here.
Presumably this works in a way that’s different from the Kinect. A patent fight between Apple and Microsoft wouldn’t be a good thing.
Apple bought the company Primesense to gain those patents, M$ does not own them.
You are correct.
The Sharon person is clueless.
Oh I’ve got lots of clues, that just wasn’t one of them. 🙂
However, Microsoft does have a bunch of its own Kinect-related patents.
So like the Kinect but more useful. i like it. Sign me up.
Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for Apple to provide 3D GUI elements in OS X. I have to wonder why.
I’m wondering what kind of calibration routine you’d have to go through to set it up and whether you’d need to do that for each user that will interact with it.