Apple Patentmania: 31 Years of Big Ideas

A visual history of Apple patent filings: the brilliant, the bizarre, the just plain bad.

By Harry McCracken  |  Posted at 1:19 am on Monday, December 15, 2008

See all: Slideshows


applepatents-ann

Design for a Doll

Filed May 28th, 1915

Yes, that’s Raggedy Ann. Yes, it’s from a real patent. No it has nothing to do with Apple. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention, and I like patent drawings, so help me…

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34 Comments For This Post

  1. Avenphire Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 4:17 am

    Errr… Optimus Maximus?

  2. AD PR NY Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 4:58 am

    This is phenomenal – very well researched. Brings back so many memories for us early adopters from the 70s and 80s

  3. Sidz Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 5:01 am

    Finally, I understand what this first comment is all about!

  4. Randall Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 5:09 am

    It’s the proximity sensor for the iPhone, right? The one that tells if your ear is on the phone, right?

  5. CHARLIE Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 5:56 am

    # 15 Is an exact match for a performa 5200 I used to own.

  6. James Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 6:05 am

    Re #10: The Mac Portable could be configured with a trackball or a numeric keypad and external mouse, so the patent drawing is indicative of the final product, though few Portables actually shipped in that configuration.

  7. DTNick Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    #30 is probably the patent for the proximity sensor in the iPhone that turns off the screen when you make/receive a call and bring the phone to your ear.

  8. Carney Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    #15 is wrong. The picture is NOT the G3 All-in-One, but rather an earlier computer, from the Performa 5200 LC series (the same case design was used with the PowerMac 5400 and 5500 series). None of them used the PowerPC G3 chip; instead they used the earlier PowerPC 603 (retroactively called the G2 by some today, including Freescale, one of its makers).

    The G3 All in One was bulkier (and frankly uglier), with less of a space for the “foot” it could swivel on, and had a slot for a third drive – an Iomega Zip drive, as well as the floppy and CD drive. And of course it had the G3 chip.

  9. Eugene Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

    #14 was probably intended to control the Macintosh TV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_TV.

  10. Sam Griffith Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    #5 – The 5.25 inch drive shown in the drawing was from early prototypes of the Mac with an Apple engineered drive called the “Twiggy”. It failed to work as expected and SONY’s new 3.5 inch drives were used instead. Woz’s disk controllers with the variable rate of spin where used also giving the Mac SONY drives a greater capacity than the same drives using a fixed rate of spin on the PC’s later. Mac’s could store 400K per single sided floppy while PC’s came in at 360K per single side.

  11. fnatifie Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 5:29 pm

    I’m pretty sure this mac came with 5.25 floppy. The 3.5 wasn’t until later.

  12. Alex Dawson Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    #18 – They did make prototypes of a device like this, codenamed Paladin – http://www.jagshouse.com/paladin.html

  13. dondient Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    As an owner of an Apple (i),
    Apple II, Apple IIe, Lisa, and numerous new macs this brings back memories. Most repairs had to be done by the user and therefore I got to see the insides of most of these

    The errors are so unimportant that I’ll not rant. Great job with the walk down memory lane. Especially the “Memory” used in the Patent filing for the Apple ii. It came out with more Ram by the time we got ours.

    I also remember the first “sawzall” type tool that we used to demolish the case on our first Mac to solder more Ram onto the logic board.

  14. dondient Says:
    December 15th, 2008 at 9:43 pm

    Also the first mouse came with an RJ11 connector and didn’t need an attached cord.

  15. JS Says:
    December 16th, 2008 at 3:52 am

    #36 is for the iPhone 3G giftcard that’s just been released, I think.

    http://www.apple.com/iphone/gift/buy.html

  16. darwiniandude Says:
    December 16th, 2008 at 4:57 am

    Number 37 is after announcement/demo but prior to release of the original iphone. Although not a physical keyboard, this patent would cover the iPhone’s switchable lcd keyboard I believe.

  17. Giwg Says:
    December 16th, 2008 at 6:16 am

    The drive on the first mac shown is correct. It was before the power insert type was developed. You had to push it all the way in manually, the cutout was to five you finger room to insert the disk all the way in. The Twiggy drive was never used on the Mac, only the Lisa.

  18. Daniel Says:
    December 18th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    #35 could still be the bottom edge, as if you were facing the clickpad head-on, and could discern if it was depressed on the bottom left or bottom right.

  19. Kelly D. Jones Says:
    December 20th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

    #15 is definitely the PowerMac 5000 series (5200, 5400, 5500).

    It was produced for a few years, I believe from 1995-1997.

    #17 looks like the G3 All In One, which was produced briefly before the original iMac

  20. Austin Says:
    January 5th, 2009 at 2:42 pm

    The patent for Computer Enclosure actually looks much closer to the Performa series of Macs.

  21. Austin Says:
    January 5th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    On page 15. ^

  22. Daniel Says:
    February 12th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    #15 is the first Mac I ever used, my dad bought it for me when I was a kid. It’s definately a Macintosh performa for sure, here’s a pic of an actual performa
    http://www.mellema.net/homecomputers/images/apple/Apple_Macintosh_Performa_5200_Large.jpg

  23. Jeffrey Says:
    March 13th, 2009 at 9:07 pm

    Number 15, the Computer Enclosure Filed February 27th, 1995, is not the G3 PowerMac (iMac predecessor), it’s actually the Performa. I have a Mac that looks exactly like it and it is the Performa 5200CD

    The PowerMac G3 all in one is seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Power_Mac_G3_AIO.jpg

    The Performa is seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Macintosh_Performa_5200.jpg

  24. McDughf Says:
    April 7th, 2009 at 6:50 am

    I Hate To Say It, But Pat No 21, The ” iMac that’s sprouted legs” Is An Actual Product.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/markpeck/1608332322/

  25. Kkyxpgmy Says:
    May 7th, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    UYO4Lp comment5 ,

  26. Daniel Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    They couldn’t release the LED keyboard because several other companies had patents that they would infringe if they released it. I think they set up a company in russia to make these keyboards.

    Nice idea though, would love to use this for stuff like final cut, or photoshop.

  27. taniabailey03 Says:
    June 15th, 2009 at 12:10 am

    Nice idea though, would love to use this for stuff like final cut, or photoshop.

    http://my-naruto-blog.blogspot.com

  28. Hamranhansenhansen Says:
    September 10th, 2009 at 8:50 pm

    The NeXT cube was also started inside Apple, and was originally called “Big Mac” as a code name. When Jobs left he took what would become the NeXT team with him, essentially forking Apple. Now we see the NeXT fork as the real Apple path and the Scully years as a misguided experiment in corporate salesmanship.

  29. dofollow bookmark Says:
    September 27th, 2009 at 3:58 am

    Hey, you have a great blog here! I’m definitely going to bookmark you! Thank you for your info.And this is bookmarkth.com site. It pretty much covers DoFollow Social Bookmark related stuff.

    Thank.

  30. promote Says:
    October 9th, 2009 at 8:04 am

    why is it have many page?

  31. โปรโมทเว็บ Says:
    October 14th, 2009 at 12:52 am

    Lisa, Apple 2, Apple 2e, and numerous new macs this brings back memories.

  32. Упражнения Цигун Says:
    November 4th, 2009 at 3:37 am

    why is it have many page?

  33. тайцзицюань Says:
    November 4th, 2009 at 3:49 am

    The patent for Computer Enclosure actually looks much closer to the Performa series of Macs.

  34. Цигун Says:
    November 4th, 2009 at 10:09 am

    The patent for Computer Enclosure actually looks much closer to the Performa series.

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