Just yesterday I had the experience of sending a text message to the wrong person. Okay, luckily it wasn’t a compromising message in any sense, but it goes to show what happens when you’re carrying out too many text conversations at the same time.
Clearly someone at Apple has had a similar experience, because a patent published Thursday reveals how future iOS devices might incorporate background images of the people you’re messaging, to ensure you don’t send out misdirected messages.
For group chats, text can be overlaid on one or more images relating to whoever is “speaking” in the conversation.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a photo stored for specific contacts, either. If there is no photo assigned, the system intelligently selects gender based on stored information and then assigns a generic male or female avatar.
Other neat innovations could include displaying images in either color or gray scale according to whoever sent the last message — or using a rotating carousel of images, or else transitional animations, for group chats.
Okay, it may not be a potentially transformative patent in line with the iWatch, for example, but it’s definitely a nifty concept — and one that I’d love to see incorporated into iOS 8.
Apple’s image-based messaging UI patent application was first filed for in November 2012, and credits QA Engineer Enrique E. Rodriguez as its inventor.
Source: U.S. Patent & Trademarks Office
