Apple He’s still looking for ways to make his iMac even better, and all those cutting-edge and sometimes hilarious ideas often end up in patents that we don’t know if we’ll see reflected in a real device in the future.
And Apple engineers have thought of a technology capable of expanding the screen of the iMac when projected onto nearby surfaces such as walls.
This patent is related to another where an iMac made of a single glass panel was proposed, and now they are has granted a patent to make iMacs use any space on the wall to project the screen.
To justify the patent, Apple comments that the various input and output devices may be made of materials that are unsightly or make it difficult for the input and output devices to function.
USPTO
The solution proposed with the patent
The solution they propose is to use the surfaces around a computer like the walls, where this future electronic device can be provided “with a projection screen that helps to improve the area used to provide a visual outlet to the user.”
“The rear wall of the housing may have a portion of glass or other transparent structure through which projectors project images onto nearby surfaces and through which image sensors and other optical sensors receive light.”, can be read in the patent.
Generally speaking, this would mean that the back of the iMac is glass, and Apple wants to make the computer effectively visible, but with different parts of the screen projecting.
“Although the slices…cannot be viewed directly, a camera on the back of the device or other image sensor circuitry can capture an image containing slices…and this image can be displayed in real time on the aligned screen with portion locations locked“, comments.
Obviously it is simply a patent and we will not see something similar in the short term, for those of Cupertino they are making sure that this type of inventions might be possible for the next decades.
