I wonder if companies ever put in patents just to throw competitors off the scent or give them dumb ideas to follow, knowing they’re not viable. Like how the USA leaked Space Shuttle plans to the USSR that wouldn’t fly.

I know of at least one famous CEO who told me he goes to tech conferences as a guest speaker/panelist and gives out blatantly false information just to throw competitors in the wrong direction.

He's almost certainly wasting more of his own time than anyone else's.

It’s ok, he has plenty of time to waste anyway

More likely it's a blanket policy of "patent everything even remotely patentable, just in case".

Some companies (not sure about Apple) offer patent incentives to employees. Our CTO once bragged about having 150 patents. An engineer in my org decided to show him up and had 150 filed within 2 years. I think the incentives probably doubled his base salary and I guarantee none of the patents are useful or will be used.

The way I've described it, and someone working in tech patents confirmed, is that you patent to the point that it's a Mexican standoff between all the players.

I don't know what the patent process is in Apple, but I've been part of the patent process at other large tech companies in similar spaces to Apple. They tend to have patent comittees that have senior staff from across the organisation. A patent is complex in terms of its value, on the one hand the organisation must be seen to file enough patents to hit their targets and look 'innovative' (spoiler: no patents are innovative) but any patent costs a tonne to go through the lawyers. There's also a non-trivial bonus for filing a patent (those good at gaming the system- oh sorry, no I mean the most innnovative engineers- can double their salary using patents).

I find it very difficult to understand how this patent would've escaped Apple's internal processes as anything other than an attempt to confuse poeple or as a defensive patent. For me, I think the defense explanation makes the most sense, Apple doesn't want to be in a position where a method of plugging an iPhone into a macbook is patented by anyone but themslves. No need to worry that the iPhone is actually thicker than the laptop they think it's going to fit inside.

I built something very similar to this years ago. seriously.

http://systems.cs.columbia.edu/files/wpid-compsac2006-fordis...

i.e. storing a checkpoint/restartable a linux desktop container on one device and being able to move them to run on another more powerful device when its available (and checkpointing back to the device when one wants to leave the more powerful computer)

I then worked on IBM Research's "SoulPad" that did a similar thing, but just checkpoint / restarting a VM.

Heck, I even tried to pitch in interviews with Microsoft, Apple and Google that they should go in this direction (didn't get the jobs). i.e. your mobile device becomes your "permanent" computer, but you can connect it to more powerful devices at home / work where your processes can run. Applications would be written to be "device" aware, so could dynamically change their UI if being used on a phone, tablet or desktop, as all 3 have different requirements for the best UX experience.

This isn't a patent. It's an application. (Can @dang fix the title?)

It was granted 2018-09-11.