Archive for June, 2009

Apple patents the CosaNostra pizza box

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

You be the judge.

From Apple’s patent:

A package is moved from location to location through delivery services like Federal Express or UPS; however what occurred during transportation, and what transpired to the package, is anyone’s guess. Occasionally, an object within the package is broken, indicating that the package experienced excessive abuse; but whose fault it is, or how or when it happened, are not known. What environments the package experienced is also not readily known.
[...]
Preferably, the MMD [movement monitor device] includes a real time clock so that the MMD tags “events” (as hereinafter defined) with time and/or date information.
Personal items network, and associated methods, United States Patent 7,552,031, June 23, 2009

And a description of the CosaNostra pizza box:

The pizza box is a plastic carapace now, corrugated for stiffness, a little LED readout glowing on the side, telling the Deliverator how many trade imbalance-producing minutes have ticked away since the fateful phone call. There are chips and stuff in there. The pizzas rest, a short stack of them, in slots behind the Deliverator’s head. Each pizza glides into a slot like a circuit board into a computer, clicks into place as the smart box interfaces with the onboard system of the Deliverator’s car. The address of the caller has already been inferred from his phone number and poured into the smart box’s builtin RAM. From there it is communicated to the car, which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display, a glowing colored map traced out against the windshield so that the Deliverator does not even have to glance down.
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, 2000

A great Apple Retail Experience story

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

Jason Kelly describes how Apple’s retail experience impressed him on his first visit to an Apple Store:

Most new Mac users rave about the solidity of the product, the no-bloatware out-of-box experience, and the sheer beauty of Apple’s technology. What I want to focus on today, however, is Apple’s superb retail experience.
[...]
Such a store shows a great deal of confidence in the products, which gives me confidence as a buyer. I’m not being rushed out the door with a flimsy piece of paper saying I have tech support for a year if I need it — just call this number in India, but don’t under any circumstances bother us here — but am instead given all the time and freedom to arrive at about the only conclusion anybody can: I want one. — Big in Japan: Apple Retail Experience, seekingalpha.com, June 15, 2009

The result was a satisfied new customer:

You know what else I wondered? What new epiphanies awaited me at the Apple Store. What other little miracles of technology whispered my name? What excuse could I find to visit my new friends in Ginza, and buy something else from them?

Catching some phat air

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

In Apple’s patent application for a sensor to measure how long skiers and mountain bikers remain aloft on a jump, the following passage amuses:

[0006]However, persons in such sporting activities typically only have a qualitative sense as to speed and loft or “air” time. For example, a typical snowboarding person might regularly exclaim after a jump that she “caught” some “big sky,” “big air” or “phat air” without ever quantitatively knowing how much time really elapsed in the air. — ACTIVITY MONITORING SYSTEMS AND METHODS , United States Patent Application, February 13, 2009