Apple patents involve control signals, navigation history, zooming controller, iPod stand
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
May 13, 2008 at 10:36am
Apple patents involving control signals, navigation history and an iPod dock cradle have appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. The invention relates to computer circuitry and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus for increasing the speed with which information is transferred between a source of data and a destination which is to use that data.
Patent number RE40317 is for a system for receiving a control signal from a device for selecting its associated dock signal for controlling the transferring of information via a buffer.
According to Apple, it’s for a computer system including a first component operated in response to the timing of a first clock, apparatus for storing information, apparatus for transferring information from the first component to the apparatus for storing information utilizing the clock of the first component, a second component operated in response to the timing of a second clock, apparatus for utilizing the clock of the second component to transfer information from the apparatus for storing information in a condition in which it is synchronized for use by the second component whereby the information may be immediately utilized by the second component without the need for storage by the second component. The inventors are Steven G. Roskowski, Dean M. Drako and William T. Krein.
Patent number 7373614 regards a method, apparatus, system and signall-bearing medium that in an embodiment represent previously-accessed data items as nodes in a tree ot rees and displays the tree or trees with the access time on an axis. The invention relates generally to navigation among data items and more particular to navigation among data items using a tree history.
According to Apple, the root node of a tree represents a data item accessed via an address entered by a user while a child node of the tree represents a data item selected from a parent node of the child node. In an embodiment, data items that were displayed in the same window as their parents have different connectors between their associated nodes than do data items that were displayed in different windows from their parents.The inventor is Tim Holmes.
Patent number 7372473 is for a zooming controller. The invention pertains to the field of computer systems. In particular, the present invention relates to a method and device enabling a computer system to access a data field having a broad range and a fine resolution.

According to Apple, it’s for a method and device for accessing a broad data field having a fine resolution. The user selects a scale which can be varied. The scale controls a range within the data field. By moving the range to encompass different portions of the data field, the user can scan that portion of the data field. The present invention allows the user to simultaneously select the scale while moving the range over different portions of the data field. Thus, the user can “zoom in” and “zoom out” of different portions of the data field.In one embodiment of the present invention, a particular piece of data within the broad data field can be accessed. First, the scale is selectively varied, thereby controlling a range within the data field. Then, the range is moved to encompass portions of the data field in which the piece of data resides. Next, the scale is successively decreased while, simultaneously, points successively closer to the location are kept with the range. The scale is decreased (i.e., increasing the range’s resolution) and the range is moved in this manner until the piece of data is actually accessed. The inventor is Daniel Scott Venolia.
Patent number D568874 is for the ornamental design for an iPod cradle (shown below). The inventors are Bartley K. Andre, Daniel J. Coster, Daniele De Iuliis, Richard P.
Article Information
Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This
Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
