Mobile Phones Blog

Glove up - Apple spread the love with the iGlove

January 5th, 2009 by Thomas

Apple seemingly file patents with the US Patent and Trademark Office every five minutes, so new of a new application from the Church of Jobs doesn’t really spark much interest, unless it’s a new generation of iPod, iMac or Macbook, or it’s something downright weird.

Apple’s most recent application most certainly falls into the latter catergory. ‘Patent #20090000010′ is for a ‘a glove system for operating an electronic device’, that has been quickly, if unofficially christened the ‘iGlove’.

The patent details how the glove is designed to allow you to use a touchscreen device, like an iPhone in cold weather, without losing any tacitility, by way of tiny apertures cut into the middle finger, index finger and thumb.

The patent application says, “When users, in cold weather, wear thick or bulky gloves … the loss of tactile feedback to the user may prevent the user from properly operating the electronic device, and may lead to frustration. Alternatively, if the user has to remove his gloves … the user’s hand may become cold and uncomfortable, which may also lead to user frustration.”

The iGlove has an outer insulating layer, and an inner conductive layer, allowing for vibrating haptic feedback sensations to buzz through whilst keeping the users hands nice and warm in the winter. Apparently, the holes in the gloves can be closed shut “to prevent cooling of the user’s fingers through the aperture,” by way of elastic rings. According to the patents, the rings are available in a number of sizes, and can be stretched to fit.

The patent is apparently authentic, which makes the image attached below (and the fact that is was greenlighted for submission to the US patents bureau) all the more worrying.

We hate to break it to you Steve, but the idea of the fingerless glove isn’t exactly a new one.

The patent application for this can be found here.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 5:02 pm and is filed under iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.