Apple has been granted a patent (quantity US 11868611 B2) ) for “offering a distant keyboard service” for the Apple TV set-top field.
Within the patent , Apple notes that streaming media units [such as the Apple TV] have gotten more and more common. They can help you browse, search, and watch media content material on demand.
Apple says that, nevertheless, the enter mechanisms for these streaming media units are sometimes easy distant controls with out keyboards that require a consumer to hunt and choose particular person textual content characters when getting into a search question right into a textual content enter management (e.g., textual content enter field). This makes the method of offering textual enter to those streaming media units might be burdensome to the consumer.
Apple says some streaming media units have a corresponding software by which a, consumer can present textual content enter utilizing a digital keyboard on the consumer’s handheld gadget (e.g., smartphone, pill laptop, and so on.). Nevertheless, the consumer should set up and invoke the appliance earlier than having the ability to use the digital keyboard to offer textual content enter to the streaming media gadget.
Apple thinks that’s too time-consuming. Mainly, it needs your Apple TV to routinely ship a message to your Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch indicating {that a} textual content enter discipline on the TV set-top field is chosen and current a notification to the consumer prompting the consumer to invoke the digital keyboard on the computing gadget to offer textual content enter to the chosen textual content enter discipline.
The macOS, iOS, or watchOS gadget can obtain consumer enter choosing the notification and current a digital keyboard for offering textual content enter to the Apple TV. The computing gadget can obtain keyboard enter from the consumer choosing characters and ship the characters to the opposite gadget. Whether or not or not this would really be simpler than simply putting in a distant management/keyboard app is questionable to me, however, if the patent ever ends in an actual answer, we’ll see.
Right here’s Apple’s abstract of the invention: “The methods described herein present a distant keyboard service for a media gadget on a computing gadget with out having to invoke an software or unlock the computing gadget. The computing gadget can obtain a message indicating {that a} textual content enter discipline on the opposite gadget is chosen and current a notification to the consumer prompting the consumer to invoke the digital keyboard on the computing gadget to offer textual content enter to the chosen textual content enter discipline.
“The computing gadget can obtain consumer enter choosing the notification and current a digital keyboard for offering textual content enter to the opposite gadget. The computing gadget can obtain keyboard enter from the consumer choosing characters and ship the characters to the opposite gadget. The opposite gadget can then consumer the characters as textual content enter to the chosen textual content enter discipline.”
