Apple has always been committed to turning the common accessories around it into smart wearable devices, integrating into the Apple ecosystem, from the beginning of Air Pods, Apple Watch, to the recent hot Apple Vision Pro, it can be seen that Apple really hopes that users can wear Apple devices on the body, if there is Apple Shoes, Apple Clothes in the future, everything is reasonable. Just recently, it was revealed that Apple may bring a new wearable device product - Apple Ring, Apple Ring.
The U.S. Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO) announced on August 2 that Apple has successfully obtained a smart ring patent that can be used as an input interactive device for other Apple products.
From the patent map, Apple Ring can be linked with Apple's Mac, iPhone, Air Pods, Apple TV, VR headset and other devices to control a series of operations.
In the patent picture, Apple released a total of 16 interaction modes about Apple Ring, including friction, rotation, clockwise rotation, counterclockwise rotation, etc., and it can be seen from the figure that Apple Ring will most likely be the structure of the inner and outer double rings, the outer ring ring in addition to the rotation action, but also with the up and down angle movement, presumably the structure of the inner and outer double rings, can bring a variety of uses to Apple Ring, to achieve good interaction with other Apple devices.
From the patent picture, it is also obvious that Apple Ring supports rich gesture control functions, combined with the recently released Apple Vision Pro, there is reason to believe that Apple Ring can make Apple Vision Pro achieve more accurate gesture control functions, or enable existing and future Apple devices to support gesture control functions, to achieve the "feat" of two-finger remote control of all Apple devices.
Coincidentally, according to Korean media The Elac, the development of Samsung smart ring Galaxy Ring is nearing completion, with mass production starting as early as August and planned to be on sale early next year. As early as July, Samsung submitted a trademark application for Galaxy Circle to the Korean Intellectual Property Office, and according to the actual situation, it is likely that Samsung smart rings will enter the smart ring market faster than Apple Ring.
In the function of gesture control, in addition to Apple Ring, the United States Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO) published a list of Apple technology patents, the patent description for the future Apple Watch watch, will also use gestures to control devices such as Mac and Apple TV.
The patent specifically describes that in the future, Apple Watch can interactively edit images, draw, process documents, make spreadsheets, play games, make phone calls, video conferencing, email, send and receive instant messages, support exercise, digital photography, digital video, web browsing, play digital music, take notes, and more.
It can also be seen from the patent diagram that by wearing and rotating the Apple Watch, you can quickly select contacts in Apple TV to achieve convenient communication; Users can manually choose to turn on/off the gesture mode in the status bar, and the switch is more flexible to effectively prevent the gesture from starting by mistake.
At present, the above Apple Ring and Apple Watch patents are temporarily in the exposure stage, and the related products with patents are not yet on the market, perhaps at the Apple conference in September, as a traditional performance "One More Thing" will launch Apple Ring, let's wait and see~