Apple Patents Display To Aid With Privacy

Remember those super shiny iPhone screen protectors which were supposed to help prevent people sitting next to you on the train or bus from looking at what you’re doing? Well it looks like Apple has filed a patent and has taken that concept to a whole new level.

This patent is titled “Systems and Methods for Electronically Controlling the Viewing Angle of a Display” and it describes a way that LCDs could use embedded “scattering modules” to “selectively steer a device generated light beam to one of two or more scattering regions of its associated scattering module.” Basically what this would do is that it would allow users to choose who sees what on their screens by setting viewable angles.

The patent shows the drawing for an iPod but who’s to say that we won’t be seeing this on iPhones or iPads in the future? After all I think it would make more sense for people to be more private about what they do on their iPhones and iPads as opposed to being concerned as to whether people know what sort of music they are into. This could be a rather elegant answer to those rather ugly shiny screen protectors.