Apple patent application eyes eye-tracking technology

Apple may be aiming to challenge Samsung over eye-tracking technology.,

An Apple patent application, dubbed "Electronic Devices With Gaze Detection

Capabilities," was published Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The application describes a feature in which your mobile device reacts to the movement of your head or eyes.

Turn your head or eyes away from the device, and the screen dims. Look back at the device, and the screen returns to life. Looking away could also put the entire device in standby mode, meaning certain functions are powered down to preserve battery power. In yet another example, turning away from the screen would pause a video, while looking back would resume the video.

Sound familiar? That's because Samsung adopted a similar feature for its Galaxy S4. Samsung's Smart Pause pauses a video when you gaze away from the screen and then resumes the video when you look back. LG Electronics has also gotten into the eye-recognition act with a feature called SmartVideo, which likewise controls video playback by tracking your gaze.

So, what's Apple up to?

The company's patent application is actually a divisional application, which means Apple took the eye-tracking invention from a prior patent filing and separated it into its own individual patent filing. The previous parent patent application was filed on September 20, 2008, while the divisional one was filed on January 25, 2013.

Samsung filed a trademark patent for a feature called "Eye Pause" on January 24, 2013, according to AppleInsider, and another one for a feature known as "Eye Scroll" in February. Yet another trademark filing for something called Samsung Smart Scroll was filed on March 8. However, Samsung also has an older patent called "Apparatus and method for detecting speaking person's eyes and face," which was filed in 2000 and granted in 2003.

Given the bad blood between Apple and Samsung, a patent battle over the eye-tracking technology could easily spring up. If Apple is eyeing this feature for a future iOS device, the company may be attempting to show that it possessed the technology first as described in its original 2008 application.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57586815-37/apple-patent-application-eyes-eye-tracking-technology/

Analog Camera for iPhone: When Is Simple Actually Too Simple?

A little over a year ago, Realmac Software released Clear, an iOS to-do list app that made the task of keeping track of tasks easy with a beautifully simple design. Starting right now, you can check out the developer's crack at replicating that success-by-simplicity formula with a $1 camera app.

For the most part, Analog Camera for iOS delivers what you'd expect: an unbelievably fast and straightforward app for snapping photos, adding gauzy filters, and uploading the shots to the Internet. You can see the filters and sharing in the screenshots above. There's nothing surprising about this functionality at all.

Whether or not you think the app is a success more or less hinges on how impressed you are with the following gesture. With a simple vertical flick you can switch between the camera UI and the gallery view. It's a descendant of the slick gesture-based UI from Clear.

That's pretty fast. From there the app works hard at keeping things simple. You can tap to pick a focus and point with one finger. A two-finger tap reveals separate boxes for focus and exposure metering. So that the camera can focus in one place and measure exposure in another.

That's another wonderful gesture. Unfortunately, it's not a new one. The very popular Camera+ already has this functionality.

From here, Analog Camera's evolution is really a reduction. Fewer options for changing the appearance of your photos. Note all the differences between Camera+ (left) and Analog Camera:

You can't even take a photo with the front-facing camera with Analog Camera! Which says nothing of missing useful features like exposure compensation, which allows you to make you photo a little brighter or darker.

Realmac software argues that the simplicity allows you to get to the actual task of taking photos faster without the "clutter" found in other applications. Whether or not you'll like the app, then, sort of depends on whether you think other applications are cluttered.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/analog-camera-for-iphone-when-is-simple-actually-too-s-510254328