Several Apple patents have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 20100277877 is for a folded flex assembly for a personal media device. Systems and methods are provided for media devices including a housing, a frame disposed adjacent to the housing, a support panel that is integrated with the frame, and a flexible circuit that is disposed adjacent to the support panel such that the support panel provides support for the flexible circuit. The inventors are Richard Hung Minh Dinh, Tang Yew Tan, Erik L. Wang and Phillip Michael Hobson.

Patent number 20100279674 involves remotely locating and commanding a mobile device. Methods, systems, and apparatus are presented for processing a remote lock command message. In one aspect, a method includes receiving, by a mobile device, a remote lock command message comprising a lock command and specifying a passcode to be set by the mobile device, locking the mobile device in response to the received remote lock command message, setting an unlock passcode associated with the mobile device to the specified passcode, and generating an acknowledgement message in response to the remote lock command message. Further, receiving the remote lock command message can include accessing a subscribed topic hosted on a notification service, the subscribed topic being associated with a lock command, and retrieving the remote lock command message from the subscribed topic. Additionally, locking the mobile device can include locking a display such that access to information stored on the mobile device and device functionality are blocked. The inventors are Stuart Slack, Brendan A. McCarthy, Carsten Guenther and Christopher Brooke Sharp.

Patent number 20100277123 is for a portable electronic device having automatic low temperature battery charging capability. Per the patent, a controller detects the temperature of a portable electronic device as being below a battery charging threshold, and in response signals one or more of the electronic circuit components that make up the device to enter an increased power consumption state so as to generate more heat in the device for warming up the battery. Other embodiments are also described and claimed. The inventors are Ching Yu John Tam and Parin Patel.

Patent number 20100277410 involves LED selection for white light control in backlights. Systems, methods, and devices are provided for maintaining a target white point on a light emitting diode (LED) based backlight. In one embodiment, the backlight may include two or more groups of LEDs, each driven at a respective driving strength. Each group may include LEDs of a different chromaticity, and the respective driving strengths may be adjusted, for example, by varying the duty cycles, to maintain the target white point. To ensure that the white point may be maintained over an operational temperature range of the backlight, the LEDs may be selected so that the chromaticities of each group of LEDs are separated by at least a minimum chromaticity difference. Further, the LEDs may be selected so that at the equilibrium temperature of the backlight, the LEDs may produce the target white point when driven at substantially equal driving strengths. The inventors are Chenhua You, Jean-Jacques Philippe and Wei Chen.

Patent number 20100277603 involves image capture to minimize the effect of device movement. A device to capture an image includes an image sensor on which an optical image is formed by a lens. The image sensor provides electrical signals that represent the optical image. A motion sensor is included to sense movement of the image sensor. An image processor is coupled to the image sensor and the motion sensor. The image processor adjusts an integration time of the image sensor responsive to the motion sensor and creates a digital image according to the electrical signals received from the image sensor. The image processor may further respond to a signal-to-noise ratio in the electrical signals when adjusting the integration time. The image processor may select a frame scan of the image sensor responsive to the motion sensor. The image processor may add movement metadata to the digital image. Richard Tsai is the inventor.

Patent number 20100277337 is for a directional touch remote. The present system and method is particularly useful for remotely controlling a device having one or more menus via a remote touch interface having at least an unstructured primary input area. A user can provide inputs to a touch interface without needing to view the interface and yet still achieve the desired response from the remotely controlled device. The primary input area of the touch interface may or may not have a background display, such as on a touch screen, but the primary input area of the touch interface should be unstructured and should not have independently selectable items, buttons, icons or anything of the like. Since the touch interface is unstructured, the user does not have to identify any selectable buttons. Instead the user can input a gesture into the interface and watch the remotely controlled device respond. The system does not provide any other visual confirmation. The inventors are Rainer Brodersen, Alan CAnnisstraro, Jeffrey L. Robbin and Gregory Charles Lindley.

Patent number 20100281459 involves systems, methods and computer-readable media for fertilizing machine-executable code. Disclosed are systems, computer-implemented methods, and tangible computer-readable storage media for obfuscating code, such as instructions and data structures. Also disclosed are tangible computer-readable media containing obfuscated code. In one aspect, a preprocessing tool (i.e. before compilation) identifies in a source program code a routine for replacement. The tool can be a software program running on a computer or an embedded device. The tool then selects a function equivalent to the identified routine from a pool of functions to replace the identified routine. A compiler can then compile computer instructions based on the source program code utilizing the selected function in place of the identified routine. In another aspect, the tool replaces data structures with fertilized data structures. These approaches can be applied to various portions of source program code based on various factors. A software developer can flexibly configure how and where to fertilize the source code. The inventors are Pierre Betouin, Mathieu Ciet and Augustin J. Farrugia.