Posted on 06/02/2016 12:16:12 PM PDT by Swordmaker
We will give Apple engineers the benefit of the doubt and assume they weren’t inspired to create new drop-protection technology for iPhones by throwing cats out of a fourth-story window.
Yet the method they’ve proposed in a new patent application for keeping dropped phones from breaking bears a remarkable resemblance to the behavior of a plunging cat, which can orient itself mid-air for the safest landing, on its feet.
“As mobile electronic devices impact a surface after freefall they may be substantially damaged, even if they are encased within a cover or other protective device,” the patent application begins. “Smart phones with cover glass may be particularly vulnerable when the cover glass impacts the ground. They may be much less vulnerable if a metal or plastic portion of the housing of the smart phone impacts the ground first or instead.”
So, just as Whiskers stays safest in a fall by landing on her paws, the iPhone can protect itself by landing on its edge. To accomplish that, Apple inventors Fletcher Rothkopf, Colin Ely and Stephen Lynch propose techniques including a sliding or spinning mass inside the phone to change the orientation of the device as it falls. They also suggest that a tiny canister inside the phone could blast out gas through external nozzles to change orientation, like thrusters on a spaceship, or even to provide a lunar-lander experience for the phone.
“The thrust mechanism . . . may engage immediately before impact to achieve a soft landing,” says the application, filed in February.
Sensors in the iPhone would measure distance to the probable impact surface.
The technology, the inventors say in the application, could also be used for laptops, tablets, digital cameras and music players.
Photo: Cat landing on its feet (Wikimedia Commons/ColKorn1982)
“We will give Apple engineers the benefit of the doubt and assume they weren’t inspired to create new drop-protection technology for iPhones by throwing cats out of a fourth-story window.”
It was chinese workers. Chinese workers, not cats that took a dive out the window.
Hollywood being out of ideas, MacGyver is coming to TV this fall. Seriously.
It looks like Al Gore doing a John McEnroe impersonation.
It was Chinese workers preparing the main ingredient for mu shu “pork.”
Yeah, I tried to patent that as a perpetual motion machine. The patent office didn’t go for it.
Just put peanut butter on one side.
Really— that make sense. .THANK YOU !!!! AIRPLANE MODE
I could live with that. It’s the hairballs I’m worried about.
iPhones still use Gorilla Glass by Corning, as they have since the very first iPhone came out. Apple toyed with the concept of switching to Sapphire but the company that was growing the boules was only getting a 10-15% success rate on their 240 pound boules. That was insufficient for production and economical runs. Apple required 90% successful boule production for it to be economical and competitive and even then the screens would cost twice as much as the Gorilla Glass. Some Android phones are using plastic. . . and a couple are using Sapphire.
He looks as if he's just been shot in the gut. . .
What that article doesn't tell you is how they got that software onto the baseband chip in the first place. There isn't much room on the baseband chip to add anything and it is isn't programable from the exterior. Ergo, they have to invade the basic phone with something that can re-write the firmware of the baseband chip from the basic phone. Not easy to do with an iPhone. . . and to do it they'd need physical possession of the iPhone and the user's passcode.
Thank you for the informative answer.
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