From U.S. Patent No. 8014760, titled “Missed Telephone Call Management for a Portable Multifunction Device.”
The iPod captured the imaginations, and many of the spending dollars, of a young crowd which was growing more comfortable with the use of personal electronics, from desktop computers to cell phones. However, on January 9th, 2007, Steve Jobs presented a keynote
speech to the Macworld convention that announced the coming of a new product: an iPod with cellular phone and Internet browsing capabilities. It was to be known as the iPhone. As mentioned above, the iPhone was not Apple’s first foray into mobile computing devices. It did have a few notable advantages over the Newton, including a more compact size and the touchscreen, the innovation which perhaps launched Apple to the forefront of the mobile computing device field. Other gadgets, especially the BlackBerry, were popular with users but relied on keyboards or stylus pens for user inputs. With the iPhone, a user could complete a text message, send an e-mail or take a phone call by operating the device with their fingers. The iPhone became even richer in features through the implementation of a few electronic components that can measure certain data or respond to various stimuli. For example, accelerometers installed on iPhone devices could detect when a user turned the orientation of their device, enabling the screen display to switch between a portrait and a landscape rendering. Ambient light sensors included with these devices could control the automatic adjustment of screen brightness in response to the amount of ambient light in an area. Future iterations of the iPhone dramatically improved on the functions this device could accomplish as well as the user experience. The second iPhone included 3G network connectivity, greatly improving the Internet connection speeds for this device. The iPhone 4 introduced the use of a front-facing camera, which became practical with the increased popularity of video conferencing through mobile programs such as FaceTime. The aluminum construction of the iPhone 5 was a major aspect of the design improvements during that generation of the device, resulting in a very lightweight smartphone. The most recently released models, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, brought larger Retina HD displays to owners as well as near field communication (NFC) chips which are used to implement the Apple Pay system. However, Jobs’ 1983 vision of a “computer in a book” was finally realized with the April 2010 release of Apple’s iPad. First announced at an Apple press conference in San Francisco on January 27th of that year, the user interface borrowed heavily from the iPhone but included a few new features, including sidebars and popover lists, and captured the imaginations of customers and critics alike with it’s immense 9.7-inch display and $499 retail price. The iPad also included Apple’s first branded processor, the Apple A4, a noteworthy development as most Apple products are constructed with electronic components and parts that have been created by other manufacturers. Most understood the impact that the iPad could have on computing, even if some were confused as to why Apple felt the need to create a device that bridged the mild gap between the iPhone and the Mac computing platform. In the first weekend alone, Apple sold 300,000 units of the iPad. Within two months, one million units had sold, which was much greater than the rate of iPhones sold after its initial release. Over their first four respective quarters, Apple sold a total of 5.4 million iPhones but a whopping 19.5 million iPads. Patent No. 8046721, entitled “Unlocking a Device by Performing Gestures on an Unlock Image.”
We were able to find some intriguing information involving to Apple’s patent holdings relative to the iPhone and the iPad. As of September 2012, Apple held a total of 1,298 patents related to mobile technologies. One of the more important patents held by Apple, and one that has come up before in patent infringement cases, is U.S. Patent No. 8046721, entitled Unlocking a Device by Performing Gestures on an Unlock Image. Issued in October 2011, this patent protects the “swipe to unlock” gesture control for Apple devices with touch-sensitive displays. Another significant IP holding for Apple that we found was U.S. Patent No. 8014760, titled Missed Telephone Call Management for a Portable Multifunction Device. The patent, issued in August 2011, protects methods of presenting information related to missed telephone calls to an electronic device owner. In July 2012, Apple was issued U.S. Patent No. 8223143, entitled Portable Electronic Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Displaying Electronic Lists and Documents. Some commentators have reported that this particular patent protects some important foundational aspects of the multi-touch display in use in Apple devices. We also noted a design patent issued for the original iPad, U.S. D670286, issued under the title Portable Display Device. Assigned to Apple in November 2012, this patent lists Steve Jobs as one of the inventors, indicative of the large focus granted to the development of this product by the Apple CEO. The iPhone and the iPad are still conjoined at the operating system, but there seems to be no plans to separate the two as of yet. With the coming of the iOS 4.2 update, which was released in November 2010, was the first iOS system designed for both the iPad and the iPhone. Improvements to the iOS operating system over the years has been almost as effective as any design or electronics component improvements in ensuring the popularity of the iPhone and the iPad. D670286, issued as “Portable Display Device.”
Sometimes the iOS updates have come with great fanfare. The iOS 5 update released in October 2011 introduced the world to the digital assistant Siri, the voice command-operated software which created a much more personal link between an iPhone owner and their device; it also greatly increased the ease of accessing information by eliminating any need for text inputs. The iOS 8 update that was rolled out during the fall of 2014, however, caused such an incredible number of technical issues that consumer outcry against the update was pretty consistent across Apple’s consumer base. This is likely due to the incredibly number of devices that iOS 8 has been designed to support, including six iPhone models, five iPad models and one remaining generation of the iPod Touch. Steve Jobs passed away on October 5th, 2011, about a year and a half after his dream of a portable tablet computer that could communicate wirelessly with other computing devices. The iPod, iPhone and the iPad brought Apple out of its troubled position in the late-1990s to become one of the most fabled tech development companies of our time. The story of these Apple devices shows how a visionary approach to addressing consumer wants might create an entirely new market and build an incredible amount of success for a company.