Suspected PayPal Hackers Seek Deal To Stay Out Of Prison
Scripps Employees Called 'Hackers' For Exposing Massive Security Flaw
Location-specific home screens coming to the iPhone?
According to a patent filing back in February, Apple may be working on a new location-specific home screen for the iPhone. In the patent, Apple outlines how a user could set a persistent default location in the weather app, and set location-based arrangements of app icons on the home screen. The patent drawings show icons for local contacts, local weather, local time and local maps. Instead of having to manually enter your location, you'd have a "here" button within the weather app (and possibly others?) that would use your current location to configure everything for you. The patent also suggests that apps could get location-specific icons, featuring landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge or the New York City skyline. These features obviously aren't of much interest for those who don't travel, but for all you bicoastal, iPhone-toting gadabouts, this is good news.
Comments
1
Subscribe to comments2late2dieAug 30th 2009 12:49PM
This is exactly the kind of thing that demonstrates why the US patent system is broken. This kind of feature, while great, should not be patented. We already have programs that figure out your location (google maps anyone), this is simply an extension of that with a better level of automation. This falls squarely in the "this is too obvious to patent" category.
In fact, the only reason nobody has done that for the iPhone yet is simply because Apple has locked down the system and won't allow developers to change anything outside their own programs.