Three Apple patents have popped up at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office involving iOS features and technology.

Patent number 20120079410 is for a scrolling virtual music keyboard such as that in GarageBand for iOS. Disclosed are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for scrolling a virtual keyboard on a touch screen device including a display. A first aspect allows detecting a user contact swipe motion in a predetermined direction along said keyboard, scrolling said keyboard across said display in accordance with said motion, and stopping said scrolling upon termination of user contact swipe motion.

A second aspect allows scrolling of a virtual keyboard to snap to an intelligent position based on a song key or relative minor of the song key. A third aspect allows a note to be held when a user's finger remains in contact with the display even though the finger is no longer in contact with a key linked to the note on the keyboard as a result of scrolling.

A fourth aspect displays a second musical instrument keyboard adjacent to a first musical instrument keyboard, wherein said second musical instrument keyboard is linked to said first musical instrument keyboard such that scrolling of one keyboard causes automatic scrolling of the other keyboard. Christof Adam and Elliott Harris are the inventors.

Patent number 20120079018 involves systems, methods, and computer readable media for sharing awareness information are provided, such as that for the Weather, Maps and Find my iPhone apps. A non-aware electronic device can require awareness information including, for example, information about its environment or information about its status within its environment, in order to perform a particular device operation.

When the non-aware device lacks an awareness component for detecting the required type of awareness information, the non-aware device can establish a communications path with an aware device that includes such an appropriate awareness component. The aware device can share the required type of awareness information as captured by its awareness component with the non-aware device.

The distance between the non-aware device and the aware device can be less than a threshold distance to ensure that the shared awareness information is relevant to the non-aware device. The inventors are Benjamin A. Rottler, Kyle Patrick Nadeau, Tyler Mincey and Taido Nakajima.

Patent number 20120078570 is for a multiple accelerometer system. Systems and methods for approximating angular velocity using a plurality of accelerometers are disclosed. In particular, in one embodiment, a method of approximating angular velocity including receiving linear acceleration information from a plurality of accelerometers and calculating a relative acceleration for at least one pair of the plurality of accelerometers is disclosed.

The method includes obtaining a distance value for the at least one pair of the plurality of accelerometers and approximating the angular velocity by multiplying the distance value by the relative acceleration to obtain. The inventors are Fletcher Rothkopf, Philip Hobson, Adam Mittleman and Anna-Katrina Shedletsky.