

Apple patents "Disappearing Button or Slider" in hardware - nirmal
http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=%22Disappearing+Button%22.TTL.&OS=TTL/%22Disappearing+Button%22&RS=TTL/%22Disappearing+Button%22

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nihilocrat
I'm curious... what happens to completely nonsensical and spurious patents
like these? Does anyone actually treat them seriously? Is it just the case
that filing a patent is cheap enough that they might as well file patents for
any idea on the planet, just in the off chance they get to sue someone in the
future for one of them? It really makes no sense to me.

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nroach
I don't read that patent as nonsensical or spurious at all. Apple already uses
"invisible" lights on their MacBook Pro computers to hide the LED next to the
webcam. You only see the LED light up when the cam comes on. The rest of the
time, it looks like part of the enclosure.

It looks like this patent goes a step beyond, and incorporates touch sensing
to make that kind of LED into a virtual button.

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raimondious
I just noticed recently that on the unibody Macbook Pro the sleep LED on the
edge of the body is hidden when off. It uses tiny perforations in the
aluminum.

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maukdaddy
in HARDWARE. As part of the actual device.

Might want to update the headline.

