iPhone Patents Promise To Automate Our Relationships At Last
Unwired View uncovered three new iPhone patents that promise to turn everything from calling grandma on her birthday to turning off your phone in a movie theatre into gloriously mindless activities.
Scheduled Communications
“A communications device may be programmed to initiate a communications operation when a particular condition is met. The user may set any suitable condition, including for example a date and time, location, event, received or sent communications operation…”
In other words, automatically email grandma on her birthday, or automatically send your wife a text message when you land in another state “I’m sorry honey, I’m seeing someone else…please pack up my clothing neatly and ship it to me.”
Intelligent and Customisable Communication
“The communications system can provide intelligent communications between devices, in which the system can identify appropriate communication modes for incoming communications requests based on a user’s preferences and availability. The communications system can determine whether a user is participating in an activity. In response to determining that a user is participating in an activity, the communications system can automatically identify one or more preferred communication modes that are available to the user.”
In other words, if I’m at the gym (tracked by my location) or running from the cops (tracked by the jostling of my iPhone since my GPS is off), my family and friends can see that I’d prefer text messages instead of calls.
Life Event Based Modes
“One or more event-based modes of operation may be automatically or selectively applied to the device when a new life event is detected…The event-based modes of operation may be used to restrict access to certain applications or functionalities on the device, enforce or restrict certain user interface or other types of settings, and add or remove or rearrange the priority of device assets. The new life events associated with event-based modes of operation may be of various types, including location-based events, environment-based events, calendar-based events, news-based events, and usage-based events.”
In other words, if you walk into a movie theatre, your phone could automatically deactivate the ringer and text message notifications, plus it might turn off all push notifications to save some battery life while you weren’t actively using your iPhone. Combined with a patent above, potential callers could even see that since you were at a movie, maybe they should delay the call, wait for you in the theater’s alley and then threaten you, at knife-point, that you never should have taken out a loan you couldn’t pay back just to buy a stupid iPhone.
I’ll take it all, Apple. Thanks. [Unwired View]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@dingus: I'd actually like for it to auto reply to text messages when I'm driving or biking.
Everything else would be work related. Random auto replies like: waiting on hardware, forwarded to correct team, workstation needs to be re-imaged, contacting departments to free up server space.
It may not be accurate, but it will be fun.
CaptCaveman
If this includes automation like turning the wifi ENTIRELY off when the iPhone detects (via GPS, NOT wifi) that you're away from a preferred wifi location,
then I'd be WAY hyped.
@dfp3050: Why would anyone ever want to do something like that???
Sincerely,
Apple iPhone OS Design Team
T-Will
@shadowproof9: Apple won't charge for it, it will be a NEW and INNOVATIVE exclusive feature in the iPhone 3GSLBM (3G Speed Location Based Modes).
T-Will
@frigg: This comment made me LOL hard!
Automatic response generated by Apple Automatic Location and Content Based Comment Responder V.646.1
T-Will
@bornonbord: FOCUS, people, FOCUS.
Exactly how sexy is this Argentine/Argentinian and what's she wearing?
wolfshades
I'm getting scared of carrying an iPhone around now. Big Brother must have access to our iPhones...
SAfiftyseven
@mykalt45: it's "the ACTUAL message"...
=oP
malaklaze
@PantherShade: No. Fixed.
@tylerstyle: Exactly what I was thinking. Good call.
Lupus_Yonderboy
@raptorrapture:
More like it does the same thing Locale on the G1 has been doing for at least 6+ months now. Apple will charge for it, how innovative and so much better!!
shadowproof9
So the iPhone can detect "life events" now, can it?
Gruv
That's pretty cool. I'll wait for 2.0 when I can just hardwire my phone into my brain so I don't have to think at all. So many things to worry about every day... eating, drinking, bathroom, ect. Would be nice to just coast through life and let the phone operate me as if I were a puppet.
Wait a sec, that has already been happening since the mid 90's when I got addicted to the internet. Nevermind.
@raptorrapture: Or more expensive.
I'd pay for an app that would route all calls directly to voicemail when the GPS finds me on the can.
dingus
@mykalt45: Meh, Argentinian doesn't bug the spell check and Wikipedia thinks both are OK.
Bordering on Douche, but I'll let this one slide as it made me do research and learn.
[en.wikipedia.org])
@OCEntertainment: Even if Apple doesn't do it first, they more often than not do it right. Or make it easier.
raptorrapture
Um, the pictures and descriptions seem out of synch. Intentional?
wow, automated relationships... but you still can't set a picture of your loved one as a background. no not the lock screen. i mean a background, like behind the apps.
dfp3050
@Pixelologist, Esq.: It was social comment on how it's very common to see the people who respond not to the comment, but to something like grammar, word usage, or something else that does not fall into context of the actually message. Ugh, I'm still figuring this internet thing out!
mykalt45
@mykalt45: Do ya wanna be?
I've seen Android apps that cover most of these areas, including an app to track friends you need to keep in touch with (Weekly Reminder: Call Sarah in Oregon), and, of course, Locale, one of Android's flagship apps.
Look the iPhone is a great device, to be sure....but can we please stop pretending that because they do what other phones have *been* doing, that it's suddenly magnificent and awesome, and OMG, APPLE IS T3H SMARTS.
In short:
[www.collegehumor.com]
Thanks, Apple, for continuing to innovate in elegant simplicity innovative!
-Automatic Comment Generation beta build V.646 sent from my iPhone
So it's quasi similar to Locale on Android?
@bornonbord: It's Argentine. (Am I nominated for douche of the day?)
mykalt45
There's already an application (can't remember the name) that has location-based notifications. It's a to-do list of some sort. Don't know if it works or how it would manage to do that if it's not running in the background. I like the idea of that though - being able to specify areas or activities where communication is limited, notification options change automatically.. it would be very useful. Then again there are so many other, more simple things that Apple could do already that would make the iPhone more useful. For instance, why doesn't the iPhone already tell me when it's someone's birthday? Am I missing something? What's the point of having a birthday field in the contact if it doesn't have the option to notify me days in advance? And why is there still no support for .ics calendar invites?
@bornonbord: Find My iPhone -> Find My Mistress?
Countdown to Wall-E predicted future?
Erik Schlange
"I'm sorry honey, I'm seeing an Argentinian. Please pack up my office and tell the state to screw themselves."
Hrm... That could have saved a lot of hassle. I'll take two, please.