Type of Article: MacTech Blog

Two Apple patents involving hearing assistance systems have appeared at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Both apparently involve iOS devices.

Patent number 20120215532 is for a hearing assistance system for providing consistent human speech. It describe san apparatus, system, and method that allows a user of a hearing assistance system to perceive consistent human speech. The consistent human speech can be based upon user specific preferences.

An Apple patent (number 20120212481) for video acquisition with integrated GPU processing has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

The patent involves systems and techniques for processing sequences of video images involve receiving, on a computer, data corresponding to a sequence of video images detected by an image sensor. The received data is processed using a graphics processor to adjust one or more visual characteristics of the video images corresponding to the received data.

Recently “MacDailyNews” (macdailynews.com) posted an interesting theory: it’s time for Apple to consider licensing Mac OS X, an experiment it tried in the past, but which failed. However, it’s an idea whose time still hasn’t come.

Apple has been granted a patent (number 8248554) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for an edge-lit backlight unit with a thin profile.

In one embodiment, the backlight unit may include a light guide configured to receive light from a source and emit such light in a broad distribution to a turning film disposed over the light guide. The turning film may be configured to redirect light received from the light guide toward a normal of the turning film.

Apple has been granted a patent (number 8245924) for techniques and systems for supporting podcasting.

Improved podcasts and techniques that facilitate their use are disclosed. The improved techniques can pertain to creating, publishing, hosting, accessing, subscribing, managing, transferring, and/or playing podcasts. According to one aspect, a client application can subscribe to podcasts and then automatically monitor the podcasts for updates to be downloaded.