Apple’s famous for maintaining every aspect of control they can, and so there’s been a bit of buzz around a recent Apple patent that suggests that they may extend their restrictions to clothing choices. The patent in question, 20080218310, is credited to Brett Alten and our good friend Robert Borchers and would appear to deal with the Nike + iPod Sports Kit, and allow the shoe sensor to be paired with a specific garment.
Here’s the relevant portion:
[0005]Unfortunately, however, it is becoming more commonly practiced to place the sensor at locations on a garment (shoes, for example) that are not specifically designed to physically accommodate the sensor and/or calibrated to accurately reflect data supplied to the wrist device.
[…]
However, some people have taken it upon themselves to remove the sensor from the special pocket of the Nike+.TM. shoe and place it at inappropriate locations (shoelaces, for example) or place it on non-Nike+.TM. model shoes.
[0006]Therefore, what is desired is a method of electronically pairing a sensor and an authorized garment.
Apple’s concern would seem to be performance-related, but naturally it also raises concerns about whether they would somehow construct a way to let you only use the Sports Kit with appropriately branded shoes. But the patent also goes on to describe a number of other sensors that could be integrated into garments, such as GPS.
What seems likely to me is that Apple is investigating ways that they could more easily extend licensing deals with other clothing manufacturers in the same way that they run the “Made for iPod” program, thus creating a whole system of garment-embedded sensors that could be used to track performance data. And as such, they’d want to be able to certify a certain standard of efficiency, hence restricting it to authorized garments.
I wouldn’t panic just yet, though, as we’ve seen any number of patents from Apple in the last several years that have come nowhere near reality. I mean, where’s video conferencing on my iPod, people?
