The Next Wave: Apple Patent Reveals QuickTime TV: What the Other Sites Missed

Posted by Dennis Sellers Feb 8, 2005 at 12:15am

Neo is Macsimum News’ international man of mystery. If we told you more, we’d have to kill you.

Stunning Apple Patent: The Time-Based Media Player
In part seven of the Next Wave of the Internet series I reviewed the many relevant clues that were presented to us at this year’s MacWorld Conference & Expo connecting Apple with Sony’s CELL based network television. In part eight of the series I presented the relevant patent points connecting Apple’s Telecom trials to the CELL project. Now is the time to present a few of the relevant extractions from Apple’s patent # 6,850,256, which demonstrate associative values, connected to the overall CELL project itself.

When understood in its totality, Apple’s Time-Based Media Player component (within the CELL project as a whole) will be seen as having the potential of being the CELL processor’s leapfrog killer app—just as Apple’s revolutionary GUI was to the 32 bit processor back in 1984. You may not see it all today, but it’ll give you a taste of what’s to come.

For now, get ready to discover one of the key components of this amazing killer app. (Note: For your convenience all patent text is presented in italics.)

Apple’s Time-Based Media Drawer
According to another aspect of the present invention, a method is provided for generating an interface for display for controlling the processing of time-based media data. A first set of data representing a graphical user interface as a primary window is generated and displayed. A second set of data representing a drawer window is generated and contains objects such as representations (e.g. icons) of “favorites” or “channels” media.

Examples of mechanisms and terminology for display interfaces, cursor control, and drawer user interfaces are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,745,096, issued on Apr. 28, 1998, and entitled, “Desk Drawer User Interface,” which is hereby incorporated by reference herein. The favorite/channel drawer 230 may also be referred to as a media drawer.

In FIG. 4, the drawer 230 is shown partially opened to reveal a favorite/channel row 244 and a portion of a row 246. [For clarity, I’ve substituted Fig.4 with Fig 5A that better illustrates the extended drawer than was illustrated in Fig.4]

Magic Time-based Media Icons
In addition, a media source icon, such as the media source icon 248, may reference a particular media channel, such as a news provider (e.g., CNN, Fox News, etc.), a major network (e.g.,ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.), a shopping network, or another channel. Such channels correspond to sources that typically provide continuous time-based media information/programming via a media source, such as a Web server coupled to the Internet. Such a media source may stream media information into data packets that may transferred across a data processing network, such as the one shown in FIG. 1, according to the QuickTime or other media formatand such data may not be stored locally (except perhaps for any ephemeral storage required for local playback). The address of such media is associated with the media source icon and is stored for quick access by the user.

Thus, wells may be filled with icons associated with files from the user’s digital processing system (e.g., a file may be dragged from the desktop or other window/directory to a well in the drawer or a file menu associated with the drawer may be used to add an icon to a well in the drawer) or may be filled with icons (which may sometimes also be referred to as “bookmarks”) associated with streamed time-based media provided by a remote (e.g., Web) system. In one embodiment, a user may subscribe to certain channels, media (Web) servers, etc., which will then provide the icons, associated with the subscribed media source(s) into wells in the drawer and/or any other directory associated therewith. Thus, in one embodiment, the drawer may be altered by the user or automatically altered/updated by a remote server or other digital processing system by transferring, rearranging, adding, or deleting time-based media icons therein. In one embodiment, the favorite/channel drawer may contain icons associated with “favorite” media of the user.

Patent Points Lead Directly to Network-Centric TV—Do Not Pass Go
When you apply Sony’s CELL Patent Points 0009-0012 in context with Apple’s patent verbiage presented above and below, we have lift-off – Not theory! Let’s quickly review those patent points once again shall we:

-A new programming model for transmitting data and applications over a network and for processing data and applications among the network’s members.

• [This programming model] employs a software cell transmitted over the network for processing by any of the network’s members.
• Each software cell has the same structure and can contain both applications and data.
• Each software cell preferably contains a global identification (global ID) and information describing the amount of computing resources required for the cell’s processing. Since all computing resources have the same basic structure and employ the same ISA, the particular resource performing this processing can be located anywhere on the network and dynamically assigned.

The global identification mechanism described in Sony’s patent, is clearly evidenced in Apple’s patent as being hidden within the media source icon … no I mean software cell … no, media source icon.These standing verbiage differentials between patents quickly become absolutely meaningless once the connection is made, as outlined above. So what new programming model could this be relating to? Well, I covered the WebObjects/ObjectWeb aspect of this in the last chapter, so it would appear that Apple’s WebCore Framework could play a role here. Combine that with IBM, Cisco and Apple’s involvement in creating the new open digital media framework supporting H.264 AVC and things begin to add up here rather quickly. The central question to all of these patent points to date remains the same: How does this relate to Sony’s 2006 network centric TV? Well, this is what Apple’s patent presents on this matter:

It will be appreciated that the digital processing system represents only one example of a system, which may have many different configurations and architectures, and which may be employed with the present invention. For example, Macintosh and other systems often have multiple busses, such as a peripheral bus, a dedicated cache bus, etc. On the other hand, a network computer, which may be used as a digital processing device of the present invention, may not include, for example, a hard disk or other mass storage device, but may receive routines and/or data from a network connection, such as the modem or interface to be processed by the processor. Similarly, a Web TV system, which is known in the art, may be considered to be a digital processing system of the present invention…

Bingo! A Web TV system is just another form of stating network-centric television such as the proposed 2006 Sony project—and the verbiage of – “may be considered to be a digital processing system of the present invention” nails home that point to a certainty. Obviously licensing is on the way. Hmm, I think I’m hearing the sound of hallelujahs from Wall Street echoing in my head?

In addition, Apple’s patent covers cellphones which confirms Frank Casanova’s key point made in his October 2004 keynote. Apple’s new time-based media player, as proposed in this patent, isn’t physically required to be on a single cellphone in order to access content like TV or tune into a live Apple Keynote or any other time-based media iServices that will eventually come to light in due course. This is why Frank Casanova ended his Keynote appearance in June 2004 with [url=http://www.apple-x.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=11
61]”This codec changes everything,”[/url] because MPEG-4 Part 10 H.264 AVC based content will be able to be beamed out to any digital device anywhere anytime directly from your Telco and or cable provider utilizing Apple’s new Xserve media server solutions – just as Frank outlined back in October 2004. That’s some magic bullet!

Apple’s Mother of all Trojan Horses
The topic of Apple secretly having multiple Trojan horses in their stable has been covered in the media before, but I think that it’s worth relating this current Apple patent as having the potential of being “The Mother of all Trojan Horses.” The one statistic that both Frank Casanova and Steve Jobs persistently quote at their respective keynotes is the number of QuickTime downloads that Apple is amassing. At Apple’s Developer conference in June 2004, the number touted was 250 million. At this year’s MacWorld, Steve Jobs proudly announced that it had climbed to over 330 million (@ 18:21 – 19:21of-QT clip) and that 98% of those were to Window users! Depending on how you calculate this growth, QuickTime downloads should exceed the 400 million mark by the end of June 2005.

In the past, this numbers exercise seemed pointless. So what if X million window users got to see free QuickTime movie clips – yawn. But now we see why this talking point has been strategically injected into every recent keynote. Yes, of course. If iTunes has stunned the Windows Empire—imagine when they get wind of this coming nightmare landing on their platform—Ouch! Over night Apple’s new time-based media-player platform could land on 400 million PC’s—Bang, a platform within a platform!

While I don’t have a clue as to when Apple will launch this surprise, it’s pretty safe to say that when Apple makes this decision, they’ll certainly provide consumers with a number of freebie features in order to temp them into eventually buying into the extra pay-per-use features. Obviously those equipped with a CELL based Nvidia like graphics card could conceivably be able to access pay-per-use video games like say, a next gen version of Doom-ed (as in Windows). I’m drooling already. CELL powered games on the Time-based QuickTime 7 player in full H.264 glory—Oh ya. Thanks to Apple/Sony of course.

Is it any wonder why Microsoft is not very pleased with the European Union’s recent decision forcing them to separate their media player from their OS? Funny, I find myself spontaneously applauding the EU against my will at this very moment – are you?
While there’s certainly more to this time-based media player than meets the eye, it requires a little background detail in order to understand it within the context of – “The Big Picture”. So I’ll be reviewing other aspects of this project in upcoming chapters that will finally bring IBM into this project with Apple beyond the open digital media framework.
So here are a few questions remaining. What else is there about this time-based media player that will make this a killer app—and, could there be more to this concept of a platform within a platform? Well, answers are on their way. Once understood in its totality, you’ll understand what’s behind the very core of what’s come to be simply known as – the Next Wave of the Internet.

Next Wave of the Internet Series includes the following thus far:
Part 1: Apple’s Next Wave of the Internet: Darwin’s leap to MAN

Part 2: On the Road to iPod-Live! In 2005

Part 3: Apple Revving-up QuickTime TV Live-Network

Part 4: Apple’s QuickTime Leaps to the Silver Screen and Beyond

Part 5: OS X Tiger’s QuickTime Could Reach More than 3 Billion Users a Day!

Part 6: To follow (rescheduled for another release date)

Part 7: Understanding Apple’s connection to the CELL Processor

Part 8: A Closer Peek at Sony’s CELL Patent: What’s missing here?

Part 9: Apple Patent Reveals QuickTime TV: What the Other Sites Missed (today’s article)

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