14 DAY TRIAL // Every week, the US Patent and Trademark office publishes over 40 new patents for Apple. This week, the Cupertino tech giant has been granted some interesting ones. By far, the most revealing is the patent that covers a surround sound system in the MacBook Pro.
Apple wants to give their laptop users more sound quality. This patent was filed back in 2012, but it only came out yesterday. With more electronic devices becoming smaller, the sound is not as full and well-rounded as it used to be. Thin enclosures cannot possibly host the space for a big speaker; therefore, Apple has thought of ways to go around that and developed a different kind of speaker system, fit for a laptop.
According to PatentlyApple, the guys from Cupertino have included an audio transducer in electrical communication with the processor. The audio transducer includes a magnetic coil and a magnet. And here's where it gets interesting.
Instead of using one or two speakers hidden on the left and the right of the keyboard, Apple wants to have multiple speakers next to the trackpad, behind the display and next to the laptop hinge. Imagine you could achieve 4.1 surround sound from your laptop without seeing any actual speakers on the device itself.
Apple went even further with this patent. They say they could build a speaker made out of gel. Such a part will receive electrical signals and turn them into vibrations. Those vibrations could be perceived as sound by the user. The gel speaker doesn't have to get a rectangular shape. It can be anything and it can surround the magnet so it is more compact and fits any space left in the MacBook Pro casing.
Talking about sound, Apple has been granted another patent that covers GarageBand drumming gestures. The patent is called "Electronics percussion gestures for touch screens" and describes the way a user can generate sound by tapping an area of the screen or by dragging his finger across another area.
The gesture can also be a two-touch point in the first area and a change in distance between the points of the second area and that may generate another audio sequence. Changing gestures will result in different volume levels, pitch or reverb. This patent will not bring anything new to the user making music on his iPad or iPhone, but rather recognizes Apple's contribution in that field.