Antennagate was a pile of BS, but that doesn’t stop engineers from continuing to improve their products. When it comes to Apple, they’re often on the forefront of innovations. Sometimes this is bad, as was the case with antennagate, and sometimes it results in a giant paradigm shift. Usually engineers won’t be sure which of the categories their changes will fall into until a product ships.
Apple’s looking to minimize that attenuation problem that was present in the US on the AT&T network, and a new patent has revealed that they’re looking at hiding antennas just behind the Apple logo in both mobile devices and laptops.
This is huge news. First, it’s huge news because Apple might be moving their antenna again. But, more importantly, it’s huge news because Apple’s thinking about antennas in their mobile machines. Sure, Apple has WiFi antennas already in MacBooks, but what if this is a “tell” that 3G and cellular based broadband in laptops is on the mind of people in Cupertino? I know a lot of people who would appreciate that, me included.
Patently Apple had this to say about the antenna change,
A logo antenna may transmit and receive radio-frequency antenna signals through a dielectric window mounted in a housing wall. The logo antenna may have an antenna resonating element structure such as a patch antenna resonating element. The dielectric antenna window may serve as a logo. The dielectric antenna window may, for example, have the shape of a logo or may contain appropriate text or other visual logo attributes.
Pretty interesting stuff. Moving an antenna to the Apple logo might be the best case scenario when it comes to working with the “liquid metal” that Apple’s been working on in their unibody laptops. It’s hard to transmit wireless signals through metal, but the plastic opening like the current logo on the MacBook would provide a better solution.
I also wouldn’t mind seeing the Apple logo on my iPhone light up, you know, since Apple’s already playing with putting an antenna there.
Can we get on that Steve? It would be super bad ass.
Article Via Patently Apple
