New Apple patents seek total dominance of selfie market

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/13/new-apple-patents-dominance-selfie-market

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Apple can’t claim to have invented the self-taken photograph – that honour belongs to an amateur chemist named Robert Cornelius – but they can certainly claim to have popularised it. And now the world’s biggest tech company may be stealing back the selfie revolution … maybe even on an iStick.

The one holdout in Apple’s selfie empire has been adventure sports, due perhaps to the iPhone’s propensity to crack when dropped or exposed to a light breeze.

This has been the gap into which GoPro has sprung. They make camera equipment – including, yes, an iPhone-friendly selfie stick – that lets you take pictures of yourself or mount cameras in your helmet while snowboarding, kitesurfing, dirtbiking, wingsuiting or anything else. For example, an Italian tourist attraction, where Wayne Fromm invented the “quick tripod”, one of the most annoying holiday gadgets in modern history.

But on Tuesday, a series of Apple patents surfaced online – and one of them would allow iPhone users to take remote pictures from a mounted camera, controlled from a watch. The patent specifically mentions weaknesses in the GoPro product.

Stock of GoPro, which went public in June 2014, dropped 12% after the news broke.

The patent describes how a camera device such as an iPhone could be mounted, such as on a bicycle helmet or on a surfboard, and then controlled remotely from a second device, like a watch.

“For example, the GoPro HD Hero2 digital cameras, sold by GoPro Inc of Half Moon Bay, California, are sold as part of an “Outdoor edition” package, Apple’s new patent states. “However, the HD Hero2 camera includes only a single image capture system, which captures images using an optical axis directed outward from the ‘front’ of the camera.”

“This can cause excessive wind resistance and presents a high profile that is more susceptible to damage and image artifacts from vibrations in some situations.”

Apple did not respond to requests for comment on what other selfie-related devices were in development, and a representative of GoPro was not available for comment.