This Week's Apple Rumors, Ranked From Dumbest to Most Plausible - Wired

In the future, Apple could employ gesture control to augment mouse controls. Photo: Alex Washburn/WIRED

Each week, there are dozens of Apple rumors, reports, and patent filings that hint at what’s coming out of Cupertino next. Some are legit, but many are totally bogus. As always, we’ve parsed the week’s rumors, ranking them in order from “utterly ridiculous” to “duh, of course.” First up…

ASK AGAIN LATER: Future iDevices Could Have a Self-Healing Display Coating

In a patent application, Apple detailed how it could prevent scratch-induced display artifacts using a self-healing coating. This one requires some background: The backlight of a display is composed of a light source, a light guide plate, and a diffuser. Light shines from the light source through the guide plate and diffuser, and onto the LCD. Sometimes the light guide plate and diffuser can get stuck together, so a binding material and beads are used to prevent that from happening. But with normal wear and tear on a phone, those beads can end up scratching the light guide plate, resulting in screen artifacts like white spots. It’s all very unfortunate. According to the patent, by using a pattern of convex bumps, a self-healing or non-stick coating like Teflon, or a combination of these, the scratching and resulting display artifacts could be avoided. This is something Apple could quietly implement in its display manufacturing technology, or perhaps tout as a feature in a new, redesigned future Retina display. Or it could just be an idea Apple patented one time.

ASK AGAIN LATER: Embedded LEDs Could Light Up Your Face During FaceTime Calls

Another patent filing reveals that Apple could be investigating how to embed LEDs in the bezel of a Mac so that they could illuminate the user during FaceTime calls. The hidden LEDs could be illuminated for teleconferencing, or could act as a scroll indicator, switching on when you’re scrolling up or down the screen. They could also work in conjunction with a proximity sensor, giving you visual feedback for gesture controls. Sounds potentially useful, but no way to know just yet if this is anything Apple would actually put into a Mac or Cinema Display.

SIGNS POINT TO YES: Apple Investigating Gesture Control

In a continuation of an existing patent, Apple detailed more ways sensors could be used to detect a user’s presence. In the patent, a proximity sensor-based system would adjust a given device’s user interface depending on how close or far you are to it. It could also do things like automatically switch from mouse or trackpad controls to gesture controls as you move further away. Though the exact implementation is still up in the air, I’d bet that gesture control will be included in Apple products at some point in the future.

SIGNS POINT TO YES: More Signs of a Sapphire-Display Equipped iPhone This Fall

According to projected Q4 2013 earnings from Apple’s sapphire component maker, GT Advanced, it looks like a fall launch for the next iPhone is imminent. We’d expect a fall launch for the iPhone regardless. Still, the next iPhone is also expected to utilize a sapphire crystal display. Sapphire is extraordinarily hard (it’s already used on the iPhone 5s’ touch sensitive home button), but in the past, it’s been too costly to manufacture to use as a display glass.

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