20070180391 User-interface design (15 pages)
Resolution independent GUI objects.

20070180383 Audio user interface for computing devices (19 pages)
Audio prompts for iPod user interface.

20070178891 Remote control of electronic devices (11 pages)
Using an iPhone to control tasks on a remote computer.

20070177804 Multi-touch gesture dictionary (14 pages)
Gesture dictionary, including chords, for multi-touch UI. Claims are directed to displaying a gesture dictionary upon receiving a trigger. There are claims that are particularly directed to a mobile telephone having a multi-touch interface and a GUI (e.g., the iPhone).

20070177803 Multi-touch gesture dictionary (16 pages)
The claims for this application are directed to displaying a gesture dictionary entry based on an input chord. There are also iPhone-specific claims for this first concept. The user can also define their own gestures for inclusion in the dictionary.

20070177367 Thermal interface apparatus (23 pages)
Conducting heat from a computer component to a heat sink.

20070176820 Apparatus and method to facilitate universal remote control (9 pages)
Using an iPod (Touch or Classic) or an iPhone as a universal remote control.
See Figure 3.

20070174310 Methods and systems for managing data (76 pages)
Related to Spotlight searching. Claims are directed to determining whether to automatically index a newly mounted device.

20070173231 Multimedia data transfer for a personal communication device (11 pages)
Sending multimedia data over a voice channel and vocalizing the multimedia data. Usable on an iPhone.

20070171233 Resolution independent user interface design (19 pages)
Mapping GUI objects so they can be scaled to various screen resolutions.

20070161402 Media data exchange, transfer or delivery for portable electronic devices (37 pages)
Wireless data transfer between mobile devices, e.g., wireless iPod or iPhone transfers. According to the claims, only one of the devices is a portable device. Though that does not prevent the device at the other end of the exchange from being a portable device, it just doesn’t require it. This covers transfers from, for example, a desktop computer to an iPod.

20070160290 Text flow in and around irregular containers (14 pages)

20070159651 Publishing and subscribing to digital image feeds (18 pages)
Photocasting, or RSS feeds with iPhoto.

20070159497 Rotation control (14 pages)
Manipulating 3D graphics using a 2D input device (like a mouse).

20070152978 Keyboards for portable electronic devices (45 pages)
Related to the application listed above. Claims recite a keyboard in which at least some of the icons contain two or more symbols.

20070152977 Illuminated touchpad (34 pages)
Touchpad (examples shown include an iPod scroll wheel or a laptop trackpad) that at least a portion of lights up when touched.

20070152966 Mouse with optical sensing surface (27 pages)
A mouse that can sense different gestures made on its outer surface.

20070156364 Light activated hold switch (25 pages)
Using light to activate and deactive a hold switch for an iPod. The device enters a hold mode when it’s dark and leaves the hold mode when it’s light; dark and light being relative to a detected ambient light level. The claims are drafted to more broadly cover this, reciting a portable electronic device and one or more sensors, so the invention is not limited to iPods or to using light to toggle the hold mode.

20070155307 Media data transfer (39 pages)
Using local servers to wirelessly transmit data to devices within range of the local server. The local server discovers a nearby device, lets the device know that there is available content, the user makes a selection, and the local server sends the content to the device. The local server can also retrieve certain profile information from the device before presenting the list of available content to the device (i.e., subscription-related information or preferences).
This application is part of a larger family; there are five other related applications.

20070152984 Portable electronic device with multi-touch input (21 pages)
iPhone and the overall multi-touch UI.

20070157094 Application user interface with navigation bar showing current and prior application contexts (24 pages)
iPhone GUI with navigation bar.

20070157089 Portable electronic device with interface reconfiguration mode (17 pages)
iPhone GUI where users can reposition icons on the display.

20070157041 Conserving power by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction-processing portion of a processor (8 pages)

20070156962 Media device with intelligent cache utilization (22 pages)
Reducing disk access during playback on an iPod, using a cache. Includes loading parts of files adjacent on a list to the selected item.

20070150842 Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image (29 pages)
Unlocking an iPhone by moving an unlock image, either to a predetermined location or along a predetermined path.
Related to Application No. 20070150826, described below.

20070150830 Scrolling list with floating adjacent index symbols (29 pages)
Scrolling through a list on an iPhone. While the user scrolls through the list, index symbols (e.g., “B”, “E”, “X”) appear on the display as the user scrolls through that portion of the list.
Related to Application No. 20070146337, described below.

20070150826 Indication of progress towards satisfaction of a user input condition (28 pages)
Changing the “optical intensity” of UI objects to show progress toward a second state. For example, when unlocking the iPhone, the screen gets brighter during the unlock gesture.

20070149252 Account information display for portable communication device (13 pages)
Real-time display of account information for an iPhone. For example, this method can be used to display the remaining minutes in a calling or data plan or the portion of the monthly alloted minutes that have been used.

20070146337 Continuous scrolling list with acceleration (29 pages)
Claims are directed to acceleated scrolling through a list based on an acclerated gesture on the iPhone and reversing the direction of scrolling (slowly) if the user scrolls past the end of the list.

20070146336 Soft key interaction indicator (16 pages)
How on-screen buttons on the iPhone change appearance when touched (by changing the brightness of the outer edge of the button). See Figure 2 of the application for an example.

20070146133 Acceleration-based theft detection system for portable electronic devices (12 pages)
This application is a divisional of Patent No. 7,218,226 (see AIPW’s discussion of that patent). The claims here are directed to using an acceleration signal to determine a characteristic movement of the device and compare that signal to a stored profile to determine if the device has been stolen.

20070132789 List scrolling in response to moving contact over list of index symbols (29 pages)
Scrolling through a list of items on a touch-sensitive screen (like an iPhone). Includes scrolling through a group of items if the user touches an index item.

20070132764 System and method for displaying text (21 pages)
About drawing fonts on a screen.

First, the reports all mentioned “a patent”. This is a basic confusion by most non-patent people. The document in question is a patent application, which serves only a notice function (that someone is attempting to patent the material disclosed in the application) and can grant some provisional rights, provided that the claims presented in the patent application issue in substantially the some form as a patent. A published application is vastly different from a granted patent (also called an issued patent), which confers distinct legal rights.

Second, the focus is on a single application, when in fact four different applications were published on July 5, 2007 that relate to entering alphanumeric characters via an iPod’s scroll wheel.

(1) 20070152983 Touch pad with symbols based on mode (27 pages)
This is the application that most others have focused on. It is generally about a multifunction device (e.g., an iPod) and various input entry modes. For purposes of this discussion, we’ll focus on the phone mode.

For example, as shown in Figure 3, predetermined locations of the scroll wheel can correspond to different numbers/symbols. So touching on a certain area is equivalent to a key press on a keypad (paragraph 0090).

As shown in Figures 8A-8E, by a user moving their finger to different predefined areas of the scroll wheel, different numbers can be selected. Tapping on the wheel enters the number. The center button can be used as a “send” command to complete the entry (paragraphs 0105-0109).

In another embodiment, the click wheel has the numbers and/or letters appear on it. This is done by having a light source incorporated into the click wheel. One possible construction for this kind of click wheel is shown in Figure 10.

Figures 24-26 show different examples of how the illuminated click wheel could look for different phone dialing setups.

While the phone-related features are used as prominent examples, they are only claimed as dependent claims. Meaning that the general functionality of using the click wheel to enter information and the display of a keypad-like structure on the click wheel (which are the focus of the independent claims) are more important to the invention.

(2) 20070155434 Telephone interface for a portable communication device (40 pages)

This is one of three related applications. All have the same figures, so the differences will be in the claims. This application relates to a telephone interface. (It’s nice when the title matches, doesn’t it?) One way of entering phone numbers is shown in Figure 3C.

In this example, rotary dialing is used. In this the numbers are advanced while the user scrolls while maintaining contact with the wheel. Breaking contact with the wheel ends the scroll (the number may or may not be entered, depending on the embodiment). See paragraphs 0089-0091.

This application goes on to describe predictive typing and shows an example of sending an SMS message.

The claims are directed to a method of using rotary dialing with a click wheel. There are also device embodiments that implement the method.

(3) 20070155369 Replay recommendations in a text entry interface (41 pages)

This application’s claims are directed to a form of predictive typing. Based on a number of input characters, a word including those characters is displayed. By changing the number of characters display (by adding or deleting characters), the displayed word will be updated. There are also device embodiments that implement the method.

(4) 20070152979 Text entry interface for a portable communication device (41 pages)

The claims of this application also relate to a form of predictive typing. A user enters characters in a first “tray”. Suggested words are displayed in a second “tray” and the user can select a desired word from the second tray.  There are also device embodiments that implement the method.

Patent application publication number: 20070103454 (8 pages)

Publication date: May 10, 2007

Filing date: January 5, 2007 (priority to April 26, 2005)

AIPW Summary: A multimedia device uses separate surfaces for input and output. The input surface is a touch-sensitive surface so that the device can be operated with one hand. The back surface is preferably the input side (hence the title) so that the user can view the output surface while controlling the device. Devices mentioned in the application include an iPod, a mobile phone, and a video playback unit. However, I wouldn’t read too much into this, since the way the devices are mentioned in the text is as part of background material, rather than describing particular embodiments of the invention.

Having the input and output on opposite sides of the device is desirable so that the output is not obscured while the user is providing input to the device and to help preserve the output screen. The user only needs to look at the output side; a cursor on the display indicates where the user’s hand is on the input side (see paragraph 0014). This would obviously take some getting used to, since your hand movements would be counterintuitive. In an alternate embodiment, UI controls could be etched into the input surface (see paragraphs 0016 and 0017).

The claims cover the device itself with separate input and output surfaces, and a method for operating the device.

(Silly note: Figure 5 shows a virtual keyboard with two “V” keys and no “D” key.)