Apple goes down the Dr Who route
DOCTOR WHO fans will notice something chillingly familiar with a new patent that has come out from Apple.
Patent number 20090268921 is for a wireless headset that sends music straight into your ear.
It has additional functionality that allows it to be used during times that the external device with which it is wirelessly coupled is not being used, but when the headset is nevertheless being worn.
The media player may include a recording function as well, so that a user can record voice notes. In addition, if the external device is a telephone (mobile or landline), the availability of a recording function could make it possible for the user to record all or part of a conversation.
Similarly, voicemail messages received on the user's telephone could be uploaded into the headset for later off-line playback. Media files recorded by the headset also could be downloaded to the external device, the patent says.
Doctor Who fans will recognise some startling similarities between this Apple gadget and an episode of their favourite sci-fi drama.
These are the same devices which were used by John Lumic, a terminally ill and insane genius boss of hi-tech outfit Cybus Industries.
He created a new race of psychopathic, super smug robots called the Cybermen who were convinced of their own superiority.
Stage one of the project involved controlling the population with a high-tech communications device called an EarPod that was used extensively in place of MP3 players and mobile phones, allowing information to be downloaded directly into people's heads.
Life imitates science fiction again. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Love the Doctor Who reference there. Makes me feel all geeky to laugh at it, but I still do love that show since they brought it back.
Yes but there is a profound difference between these ear pieces and the Dr Who version which highlights the difference between art and life, specifically cybercontroller is not called John Lumic.
*laughs at joke of the day*
Having a look at the full patent (after downloading a pile of HD wasting apps), it appears that the big fruit is to produce a bluetooth headset.
Old tech as expected, but innovative. The only real difference to present headsets is that it can be converted for strio listening and has some functions such as voice and call recording, fm radio and BT music listening.
Keeps the fan boys happy!
That episode was transmitted a year before they applied for the patent. Given The Patent Office once citied the Beano as prior art they might want to give a UK application a miss.
I've always maintained that the Cyberman is the natural evolution of the Apple fanboi.
Everything from their obsession with upgrading, their mission to convert everyone else or delete them, the lack of emotion and empathy, the monotone voice, the grey G4 finish, the insistence they're superior, to the fact they're *always* beaten.
Now we know the Doctor's real name... Bill Gates. You watch, that'll be his last regeneration - straight into Bill Gates, he'll lose the Tardis and set up Microsoft to defend the human race from Steve Jobs and his spare parts.
Oh-my-god! Didn't Jobs already have spare parts this year and then delete delete delete his home directory files?!!!
And 'steven paul jobs' is an anagram of 'Jon Lumic'!
Nick Farrell is going to get "deleted" in the first wave of Apple fanbois who are going to be upgraded.
Am I missing something here? My Motorola S9 (bluetooth headset) coupled with my old HTC Touch (win mobile 5.1) does excatly the job; controlling remotely mediaplayer and recording voice on the phone! Yet another great innovation from fruity appo
This can only lead to giant-floating-pink-pig-Zzeppelins above, between and below.
Oooh I get so emotional in the age of steal.
In Share mode, we can all hear the beat of a different drum.
Walkin' on the wire,
H-I-G-H W-I-R-E...
But I must let the show go on.
She often inclined to borrow
somebody's dreams till tomorrow
although I chose this lonely life
It seems it's stranglin' me now
There is no other day
Let's try it another way
You'll lose your mind and play
Free games for May
I wasted TIME.
Wasted,
wasted,
wasted time.
look we understand
it is a game but...
you'd think maybe
that is real...
big cigars, gigantic car__
They're all laughin' at the lie
I wasted time
Wasted, wasted,
all too much time
Walkin' on the worrier, I worrier
boot I moot let the shore go on
there's an enormous crowd of people
They're all after my blood
Help me get away
I wish maybe they would tear
down the walls of this theatre
Let me out, let me out
Suffering from AngeLIEN invasion?
It's not a patent, it's a patent application that has been published.