Apple Acquires Patent For Data Sharing and Collaborating Over Projects

Apple has always been busy honing its sword to be the best in the industry. It follows every trend in the market and pensively work to set those trends in the first place. Patents like Gaze control or Joystick enabled smartphones are all spark a new tech in the market. And catching up with the trend of VR (virtual reality) devices, it had recently acquired a patent of a device enabling your smartphone to be modified into one. And the Apple on Tuesday (24th February) was granted a new patent by USPTO reading ‘Interactive application sharing’.
This patent describes provisions that allow multiple users to share and collaborate on projects in-app. This is much like the web-based productivity services provided by Google. Apple’s invention adds in video-conferencing capabilities and  making it a more personal collaboration tool.
Justifying the need of this, Apple brought to notice the fact that although the devices present allow users to share and collaborate but offer several obstacles. An example provided by Apple is of sample drafts that might be emailed from one worker to another rather than shared in a single app. Apple claimed that this costs time and in some cases money too. With this patent, Apple is set to bring back the human element while working together, by allowing users to share document data in a common app in real time. Also there are possibilities of screen and media sharing and live video streaming discussed in this patent.

First step to the process is a user initiating a collaborative session with other device/devices, which in turn accepts the invitation to establish a wireless connection. The system will allow application sharing which will transfer application data through the established wireless bridge. Patent also mentions that the data can be overloaded on top of a real time face image, calling it to be FaceTime image or the other way around.

On security notes, the patent reads options of making the data public or private. Users can also choose between the data units to be placed in shared or private category at the same time. Other things showcased in the patent are operation workflow, user interface, communication protocol layouts, etc.
With this patent Apple has showcased its motive to join the ranks of Google when it comes to real time sharing and interactive services. But the application of this patent is still unknown but users can be positive about it to be integrated in the iOS 9.