Type of Article: MacTech Blog

Future iOS devices could have compact, ejectable components, per a patent (20090267577) at the US Patent & Trademark Office.

An Apple patent (number 20110258254) for method and apparatus for updating and synchronizing information between a client and server has appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. It seems to involve the new iCloud service, as well as Apple’s (or at least the late Steve Jobs’) preference of HTML5 over Flash.

Two new Apple patents show that Apple is working on hydrogen fuel cell technology.

Patent number 20110256463 is for a parallel fuel stack architecture. The disclosed embodiments relate to a system that provides a power source. The power source includes a set of fuel cells arranged in a fuel cell stack. The power source also includes a power bus configured to connect the fuel cells in a parallel configuration. The inventors are Steven C. Michalske and Bradley L. Spare.

Those pundits who have declared that Apple is losing interest in the Mac, especially the desktop line, might think again.

In Apple’s latest fiscal quarter, Apple, as CEO Tim Cook noted, gained significant share in its computer business. Approximately 4.89 million Macs were sold during the quarter. That beats the previous record by about 750,000.

The MacBook Air and MacBook Pro were the top sellers for the company with the laptop line accounting for 74% of Mac sales. However, the desktop line — mainly the iMac — moved almost 1.3 million units. That’s a record for Mac desktop sales.

Apple has been granted two solar-related patents by the US Patent & Trademark Office.

Patent number 8039360 involves a method of assembling integrated circuit components. The disclosure identified as methods of mounting integrated circuits, including solar cells, to a substrate wherein the circuits are mounted prior to being singulated into discrete die. Once the semiconductor die sites or other circuits are formed on a wafer, the wafer will be attached, either whole, or divided into one or more multi-die site wafer segments, to a substrate.