The great romance of the 21st century really has to be Apple and patents.  Laced with such potential to tease and excite the Mac-faithful, the joy of it for me is seeing just how cleverly the idea of the patent is twisted around in the final product.  Still, there are some things which look really obvious (although I reserve the right to be surprised on launch-day), and one of them is this idea for an induction-based dock.

 

Now there’s no telling whether this is for the iPhone or something else (y’see, there’s one way they could surprise us) – it would seem to fit in quite nicely with what (little) we already know about the phone’s home-on-your-desk.

“In one implementation, both data and power are transferred via the inductance-based system. For example, low frequency electrical current may be passed from the primary coil to the secondary coil in order to power or charge the portable electronic device and high frequency current may be passed from one coil to the other in order to send/receive data … The data and power inductors may be separate, integral or they may be superimposed on one another. In another implementation, power is transferred via an inductance-based system and data is transferred via a wireless system. The combination of inductance and wireless provides an efficient way to transfer both power and data while keeping both the docking station and portable electronic device fully enclosed.” Apple patent

In the second image it seems to indicate a change of functionality based on the dock recognising what orientation the device (which has to be said is very iPhone-shaped) is at.  Now that might be simply in order to continue charging and synchronising whether it’s upside-down or turned at right-angles, or it could be used for something clever like prioritising, say, transferring all your video files if you dock it landscape.

The system would likely be based on inductive coils, as has been seen in the Herman Miller Inc. charging desk.  The patent itself was filed back in August 2005.

Apple may turn to induction for iPod docking, charging [AppleInsider]