A sample menu included with the patent.
You’ve just bought you new Apple Computer, pull it out of the box and remark about how pretty it looks all white and clean. Power it on and before you can even click the mouse an advertisement window pops on your screen “Your computer will start momentarily, but first a word from our sponsors”. Not something you would expect from Apple Computers who for over the last year has been running advertisements specifically targeting things such as advertising (also known as bloatware) that many low and mid-range PC’s come pre-loaded with.
It doesn’t stop there either, in a recent patent filed at the US Patent Offices, Apple left no stone unturned in possible advertising locations including “portable” and “media” devices which we can obviously include iPhones, iPods and the like. We see advertising everywhere these last few years so it would not be a total let down if we had to let some boring commercial play for 10 seconds before we get to watch a whole episode of a television show on Hulu or Fancast, but our operating systems… really?
Beyond just adding the advertisements Apple could decide they want to make sure you are watching by basically crippling whatever device you may be using. This means they could lock up your computer, have your iPhone ignore touches on the screen and make you confirm at a random place in the ad that you are in fact actively watching. If you fail to prove to the software you were present and did watch the ad it will essentially in my opinion punish you for not watching by making the ad “not count”. But make of these excerpts from the patent filing what you would like.
“[T]he advertisement screen area includes a response button. The response button is displayed in order to confirm that the user is actually watching the advertisement content. During the presentation of the advertisement content, the response button may appear at a time that the user does not know of in advance, [and] may appear in different screen locations, it may appear with a different size, and/or it may respond to different keyboard shortcuts, etc., in order to confirm the presence of an attentive user…. In contrast, if the user does not click (within the predefined time), then the advertisement does not count.”
“The operating system is configured to present one or more of the advertisements to users of the computer device. In some implementations, the operating system can disable one or more functions during the presentation of the advertisements and then enable the function(s) in response to the advertisements ending. That is, the operating system can disable some aspect of its operation to prompt the operator to pay attention to the advertisement.”
Now don’t get me wrong Apple has filed for some insane patents in the past, some people even joke that Apple filed a patent for the “on/off switch”. In truth the image above might just be Apple trying to get a leg up on Microsoft who has been experimenting in the use of advertisements to subsides products or even make them completely free such as free games for their Zune players that play an ad prior to starting the game.
On the other hand if Apple does succeed in getting this patent and does select to impliment this idea it could anger long time Apple users that do buy an Apple computer in part (large and small) because they lack bloatware that is included on some low and mid-range PC’s. So we’ll have to keep a wait and see approach to this one, as Apple doesn’t really need the patent to move forward with the idea even if it’s not approved. The question is are the willing to risk the possible backlash if they did use such an idea.
