Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s patent application, filed on Thursday with the U.S Trademark office, exclaims the company’s growing interests to extend display technology that supports high resolution. This technology is aptly suited to effectively serve near-eye applications. This idea is somewhat similar to the one witnessed in Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Project glass display technology.
It has been earlier noted that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) particularly narrowed down the use of its display invention in a “portable Heads up Display”
In as much as the whole idea of a Heads up Display stirs excitement, existing technologies have not satisfied the expectations exhibited by consumers with regard to portable electronics. Apple’s new technology is, however, expected to bring a change to the age-old way of looking at things. While the current technology used in the iPhone and iPad extends an exceedingly high resolution, extremely close viewing distances are still blurry. If the patent pushes through, Apple expects to counter this problem.
The big obstacles that may bottleneck the success of Apple’s innovative idea are the energy and cost concerns. Apparently, designing high resolution screens does not bear reservations for cost effectiveness.
Apple fears that the addition of physical pixels may have negative effects not only on their bank account, but also on the size and weight of their devices. Nonetheless, it argues that there is a mechanism through which its devices can enjoy high resolution, without necessarily increasing the number of physical pixels.
In the filing, Apple pushes for the probable use of an actuator that will be enforced in order to switch physical pixels through multiple positions in predetermined time slots, thereby creating the visual illusion of multiple pixels from a single physical pixel.
Underlying the incredible innovation, will be a robust data system that will highly prioritize time. Stored data will be fed to corresponding data in a time based environment.
While this approach seems viable, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) also has another approach in mind. Its second approach also places emphasize on minimizing its costs, and snuffing out the possibility of compromising device dimensions through the addition of physical pixels.
The second idea is more dependent on an array of optics that are placed between the lens and the user’s eye. The resultant assembly also creates an illusion that suggests the existence of multiple pixels.
Apple is currently embarking on a journey of innovations, as one of its previously filed patents was granted yesterday. Likewise, today, it has published a patent that is driven by Near Field Communication, commonly known as NFC.
