Apple patent filing details devices with linked projectors

A phone next to a notebook computer, projecting onto the same work space

A newly available Apple patent application has provided additional hints that projectors could one day end up in future Apple products, including the company's phones, tablets, and as an handbag for notebook computers to help make it easier to share content with one another.

The application "Projected display shared workspaces" was filed in February 2010 and pulled up this morning by Patently Apple. It draw round a system for taking what's on screen and projecting it onto a nearby surface. What's interesting about the system proposed in this particular patent filing is that it can join projections from multiple devices into one screen, in what's dubbed the "shared workspace."

The application notes that "consumers frequently share data stored on electronic devices with other people," but that portable devices classically come with small screens, making it tricky to share with a group. The company's solution promises to solve that by offering a way for devices with projectors to link up to one a new in order. The end result is a larger picture for presenting media and other documents, using a sever or a close-range transfer medium like Bluetooth, ZigBee, or near-field communications (NFC) to ferry the data back and forth between the devices.

Of special note is that Apple has been tied to the domain name of Applepico.com, something blog Macrumors discovered last week. Handheld projectors--which have cropped up on a number of point-and-shoot cameras, cell phones, and as standalone devices--are commonly referred to as "pico" projectors.

This is not the first Apple patent application to touch on integrating projectors into portable devices. A filing uncovered in April 2010 detailed building a projector into a notebook computer. Just a month before that, another filing had detailed how projectors might be used if attached to phones, building on a 2007 patent application that detailed using attached or built-in projectors to display media.
CNET