Apple Files 2 New "Shake to Print" Patents for iOS Devices

Yay! New patent filings from Apple! Just what you always wanted! Unless you're Samsung, that is. Anyway, there are a new pair of patent filings from the company that would allow users to select custom settings for printing by moving or interacting with an iPhone or an iPad in different, unique ways.

The filings were recently published this week by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and are entitled Systems and Methods for Defining Print Settings Using Device Movements and Systems and Methods for Defining Print Settings Using an Input Interface.

One example of how the applications could be used described how a user could shake their iPhone back and forth in order to enable a print settings mode. In addition to that, the patents gave an example of a user shaking their iPad to cancel a print job. This isn't exactly new tech for the company, as Apple already has a system-wide feature that allows users to shake their device to undo things as well as a shake option that shuffles music on devices.

This new concept, however, could allow users to change settings, like print orientation, by rotating or moving an iOS device. One example included in the patent stated that viewing a photo in portrait mode could then send the picture to a printer with the same layout.

The patent application also presents new ways that a user could interact with an iPad to select printer settings. Users could select an array of pages to print from a document, while the template selector would show a user how their content would appear on various paper sizes.

Whenever viewing multiple pages of a document at one time on a touchscreen device, a user could also use their finger to draw across the pages and signify the order in which the pages should be printed. Whether or not this technology actually makes it on to future Apple devices remains to be seen, though the ideas are definitely interesting.

Source: AppleInsider - Apple's 'shake to print' concept would add custom printing options to iOS devices

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