A bit sexist to only have men in the illustrations
It's tricky whenever you make a representation of a woman because people complain no matter what you do. If you try not to make them look attractive, you make them look like guys; if you try to make it obvious they're women (breast size, skirts, curves, long hair, long legs, makeup, big lips, eyelashes, big eyes), they look sexualized and you get accused of objectifying women. Here's a patent with a woman in it:
They've clearly gone out of their way to not sexualize her but one of the images still has her on all fours, I'm not sure if that was a necessary position to even draw to show the product but you can see how difficult the subject matter is. If they make them too skinny, they are showing unrealistic portrayals; particular hairstyles will take more time to draw and can get in the way of certain products. There's one here with a necklace and you can see all the effort they've put in with the hair, you could similarly question why they chose a woman for a necklace product:
If a guy posted a picture of himself on twitter half decomposed or the size of a house, it wouldn't get nearly the same attention, at least from guys anyway. The male body is just a more neutral style and doesn't really cause any debates about body image. People don't complain that Ken from Ken and Barbie, He-Man etc are unrealistic because nobody cares. It's always a problem when women are photoshopped on posters but not guys, even though they're photoshopped too.
But of course, you still get into trouble by omitting women. Ubisoft was caught up in that where their video game had a male lead and has in most of the series Assassin's Creed and people asked why not have an option to play as a female character:
I think the problem in some of the images shown there would be polygon count. The persistent problem is in fact that #womenaretoohardtoplease. I don't even prefer that men are used, I prefer to see women myself but it always sparks some unnecessary debate about body image.
This is also purely a PrimeSense reassignment. The original application was made by PrimeSense in Israel in 2008. Then they applied for a US patent (for the same patent) in 2011. Apple bought PrimeSense during the review process resulting in the application being transfered to Apple and now awarded to Apple.
So I'm not too sure if Apple is going to realize this. It's an inherited patent, one of many, from the PrimeSense acquisition. It is always possible that Apple will use it but this being granted to Apple is by no means an indication that it will.
A bit sexist to only have men in the illustrations
It's tricky whenever you make a representation of a woman because people complain no matter what you do. If you try not to make them look attractive, you make them look like guys; if you try to make it obvious they're women (breast size, skirts, curves, long hair, long legs, makeup, big lips, eyelashes, big eyes), they look sexualized and you get accused of objectifying women. Here's a patent with a woman in it:
They've clearly gone out of their way to not sexualize her but one of the images still has her on all fours, I'm not sure if that was a necessary position to even draw to show the product but you can see how difficult the subject matter is. If they make them too skinny, they are showing unrealistic portrayals; particular hairstyles will take more time to draw and can get in the way of certain products. There's one here with a necklace and you can see all the effort they've put in with the hair, you could similarly question why they chose a woman for a necklace product:
If a guy posted a picture of himself on twitter half decomposed or the size of a house, it wouldn't get nearly the same attention, at least from guys anyway. The male body is just a more neutral style and doesn't really cause any debates about body image. People don't complain that Ken from Ken and Barbie, He-Man etc are unrealistic because nobody cares. It's always a problem when women are photoshopped on posters but not guys, even though they're photoshopped too.
But of course, you still get into trouble by omitting women. Ubisoft was caught up in that where their video game had a male lead and has in most of the series Assassin's Creed and people asked why not have an option to play as a female character:
I think the problem in some of the images shown there would be polygon count. The persistent problem is in fact that #womenaretoohardtoplease. I don't even prefer that men are used, I prefer to see women myself but it always sparks some unnecessary debate about body image.
Too true.
Women like to fuss; it’s in their nature, and we just have to accept it.
[QUOTE]According to the patent, the device itself moves in between three distinct operating states, including any combination of locked/unlocked, tracked/not tracked and active/inactive.[/QUOTE]
That's good! Otherwise each time your team scores, everything change on TV ! :-)
Not to mention having "fun" with your partner in front of television...
Women like to fuss; it’s in their nature, and we just have to accept it.
Sometimes there's issues that are genuine problems and we should work to fix them but it's rare these days and the problem is they latch onto the wrong angle on what the issue is or they choose issues that aren't feasible to correct and label them as purposeful discrimination when they aren't.
In the Ubisoft example, they made an Assassin's Creed game with a female lead and you can't choose a male character. The problem wasn't that women are too hard to animate as the twitter campaign suggests, it's just twice the animation work to do both for a single title and not worth it considering there's usually just one lead character. You can't have a character based on historical events with a backstory and then just switch the character around e.g this was Abraham Lincoln OR if you prefer, Andrea Lincoln. If they have scenes where the character kisses a partner or has a child in the story, you can't just trivially change the gender around. You have an Assassin trying to climb up a building while 7 months pregnant and you get all the other Assassins to help you deliver the baby.
In the patents, you could say why are they all white characters too?
They tried to accentuate the lips but already that's getting into sensitive territory. They simply can't portray different skin tones with black and white images so all characters still look white.
It's not really a huge problem to stick with market demographics either. If most guys are buying technology then it makes sense to put guys in the patents. If most women are buying necklaces then put women in those patents. Microsoft had this problem with one of their ads in Poland. Poland has hardly any black population and their ad agency replaced a photo with a black guy in it with a white guy's head but forgot to switch the hands. It looked racist, it may well have been but it could also just have been changing the ad to reflect their target audience.
Concerning the 3D gesture technology, the difficulty with this type of input that the patent is trying to address is having an idle state and having it ignore accidental input as well as the problem of 1:1 mapping. This is why Sony and Nintendo originally opted for the wand. Using specific gestures for lock/unlock has the advantage of not losing remote controls but it's still liable to accidental input.
The cameras are pretty accurate now:
[VIDEO]
I'd expect the next sensors to improve beyond that. They could implement a slide-to-unlock gesture of some kind to enable input but it still has to revert back to an idle state with either a timeout or specific gesture.
As soon as a person unlocks the device, they could do motion tracking and focus the beams on them to increase the resolution and ignore input from others. If that person goes to an idle state, it can ignore minor input but notice when they move more abruptly soon after and not require a full unlock but after a prolonged idle state, require an unlock. It can tell the difference between being in a menu system or being in the middle of playback where one requires more interaction than the other.
Things like pausing a movie shouldn't need an unlock though. It'll take a lot of experimentation to get it right.
This is another area they could use a vertical swipe text input or linear text strip of some kind. You could speak it but if it knows you're looking for movies, it can quickly narrow down the characters to possible options with character selection and auto-complete.
A touch wand would be easier to do and still give most of the gestures but 1:1 too and much easier idle state with no limited field of view.
Comments
I've always been curious as to who does the drawings for patents...
Based on the big old fashioned computer box shown, I suggest a Windows PC artist.
I see a Mac Mini in it's place.
But do we really need this ?
Ah yes, the PC industry does for the profit.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/13/technology/gopro-apple-patent/index.html?category=home
Love the beard, but why now women?
And why no lesbian one-legged blacks?
It’s an outrage.
Sorry, my Swedish spellcheck completely botched my post.
I meant to write. " ... but where are the women?" You seem to have gotten the jist of what I was trying to say anyway.
A bit sexist to only have men in the illustrations
Terribly.
So, so shocking. Who would have thought it?
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
It's tricky whenever you make a representation of a woman because people complain no matter what you do. If you try not to make them look attractive, you make them look like guys; if you try to make it obvious they're women (breast size, skirts, curves, long hair, long legs, makeup, big lips, eyelashes, big eyes), they look sexualized and you get accused of objectifying women. Here's a patent with a woman in it:
https://www.google.com/patents/US6944883
They've clearly gone out of their way to not sexualize her but one of the images still has her on all fours, I'm not sure if that was a necessary position to even draw to show the product but you can see how difficult the subject matter is. If they make them too skinny, they are showing unrealistic portrayals; particular hairstyles will take more time to draw and can get in the way of certain products. There's one here with a necklace and you can see all the effort they've put in with the hair, you could similarly question why they chose a woman for a necklace product:
https://www.google.com/patents/US20120324946
All the time on twitter, women post photos of themselves and they get floods of comments from other women about it, usually on the fat/skinny debate:
http://www.lifeandstylemag.com/posts/giuliana-rancic-s-skinny-body-at-golden-globes-sparks-worries-from-fans-on-twitter-49343
If a guy posted a picture of himself on twitter half decomposed or the size of a house, it wouldn't get nearly the same attention, at least from guys anyway. The male body is just a more neutral style and doesn't really cause any debates about body image. People don't complain that Ken from Ken and Barbie, He-Man etc are unrealistic because nobody cares. It's always a problem when women are photoshopped on posters but not guys, even though they're photoshopped too.
But of course, you still get into trouble by omitting women. Ubisoft was caught up in that where their video game had a male lead and has in most of the series Assassin's Creed and people asked why not have an option to play as a female character:
http://www.polygon.com/e3-2014/2014/6/10/5798592/assassins-creed-unity-female-assassins
The reason they gave was they'd have to redo all the animations, which led to the twitter campaign:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/womenaretoohardtoanimate
I think the problem in some of the images shown there would be polygon count. The persistent problem is in fact that #womenaretoohardtoplease. I don't even prefer that men are used, I prefer to see women myself but it always sparks some unnecessary debate about body image.
This is also purely a PrimeSense reassignment. The original application was made by PrimeSense in Israel in 2008. Then they applied for a US patent (for the same patent) in 2011. Apple bought PrimeSense during the review process resulting in the application being transfered to Apple and now awarded to Apple.
So I'm not too sure if Apple is going to realize this. It's an inherited patent, one of many, from the PrimeSense acquisition. It is always possible that Apple will use it but this being granted to Apple is by no means an indication that it will.
A bit sexist to only have men in the illustrations
It's tricky whenever you make a representation of a woman because people complain no matter what you do. If you try not to make them look attractive, you make them look like guys; if you try to make it obvious they're women (breast size, skirts, curves, long hair, long legs, makeup, big lips, eyelashes, big eyes), they look sexualized and you get accused of objectifying women. Here's a patent with a woman in it:
https://www.google.com/patents/US6944883
They've clearly gone out of their way to not sexualize her but one of the images still has her on all fours, I'm not sure if that was a necessary position to even draw to show the product but you can see how difficult the subject matter is. If they make them too skinny, they are showing unrealistic portrayals; particular hairstyles will take more time to draw and can get in the way of certain products. There's one here with a necklace and you can see all the effort they've put in with the hair, you could similarly question why they chose a woman for a necklace product:
https://www.google.com/patents/US20120324946
All the time on twitter, women post photos of themselves and they get floods of comments from other women about it, usually on the fat/skinny debate:
http://www.lifeandstylemag.com/posts/giuliana-rancic-s-skinny-body-at-golden-globes-sparks-worries-from-fans-on-twitter-49343
If a guy posted a picture of himself on twitter half decomposed or the size of a house, it wouldn't get nearly the same attention, at least from guys anyway. The male body is just a more neutral style and doesn't really cause any debates about body image. People don't complain that Ken from Ken and Barbie, He-Man etc are unrealistic because nobody cares. It's always a problem when women are photoshopped on posters but not guys, even though they're photoshopped too.
But of course, you still get into trouble by omitting women. Ubisoft was caught up in that where their video game had a male lead and has in most of the series Assassin's Creed and people asked why not have an option to play as a female character:
http://www.polygon.com/e3-2014/2014/6/10/5798592/assassins-creed-unity-female-assassins
The reason they gave was they'd have to redo all the animations, which led to the twitter campaign:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/womenaretoohardtoanimate
I think the problem in some of the images shown there would be polygon count. The persistent problem is in fact that #womenaretoohardtoplease. I don't even prefer that men are used, I prefer to see women myself but it always sparks some unnecessary debate about body image.
Too true.
Women like to fuss; it’s in their nature, and we just have to accept it.
Is he spanking that booty in the lower left drawing?
That's good!
Otherwise each time your team scores, everything change on TV !
:-)
Not to mention having "fun" with your partner in front of television...
Of course not, it's a technology patent. He's pushing a message into her inbox.
Sometimes there's issues that are genuine problems and we should work to fix them but it's rare these days and the problem is they latch onto the wrong angle on what the issue is or they choose issues that aren't feasible to correct and label them as purposeful discrimination when they aren't.
In the Ubisoft example, they made an Assassin's Creed game with a female lead and you can't choose a male character. The problem wasn't that women are too hard to animate as the twitter campaign suggests, it's just twice the animation work to do both for a single title and not worth it considering there's usually just one lead character. You can't have a character based on historical events with a backstory and then just switch the character around e.g this was Abraham Lincoln OR if you prefer, Andrea Lincoln. If they have scenes where the character kisses a partner or has a child in the story, you can't just trivially change the gender around. You have an Assassin trying to climb up a building while 7 months pregnant and you get all the other Assassins to help you deliver the baby.
In the patents, you could say why are they all white characters too?
Here's a patent for African Americans:
https://www.google.com/patents/US20110247126
They tried to accentuate the lips but already that's getting into sensitive territory. They simply can't portray different skin tones with black and white images so all characters still look white.
It's not really a huge problem to stick with market demographics either. If most guys are buying technology then it makes sense to put guys in the patents. If most women are buying necklaces then put women in those patents. Microsoft had this problem with one of their ads in Poland. Poland has hardly any black population and their ad agency replaced a photo with a black guy in it with a white guy's head but forgot to switch the hands. It looked racist, it may well have been but it could also just have been changing the ad to reflect their target audience.
Concerning the 3D gesture technology, the difficulty with this type of input that the patent is trying to address is having an idle state and having it ignore accidental input as well as the problem of 1:1 mapping. This is why Sony and Nintendo originally opted for the wand. Using specific gestures for lock/unlock has the advantage of not losing remote controls but it's still liable to accidental input.
The cameras are pretty accurate now:
[VIDEO]
I'd expect the next sensors to improve beyond that. They could implement a slide-to-unlock gesture of some kind to enable input but it still has to revert back to an idle state with either a timeout or specific gesture.
As soon as a person unlocks the device, they could do motion tracking and focus the beams on them to increase the resolution and ignore input from others. If that person goes to an idle state, it can ignore minor input but notice when they move more abruptly soon after and not require a full unlock but after a prolonged idle state, require an unlock. It can tell the difference between being in a menu system or being in the middle of playback where one requires more interaction than the other.
Things like pausing a movie shouldn't need an unlock though. It'll take a lot of experimentation to get it right.
This is another area they could use a vertical swipe text input or linear text strip of some kind. You could speak it but if it knows you're looking for movies, it can quickly narrow down the characters to possible options with character selection and auto-complete.
A touch wand would be easier to do and still give most of the gestures but 1:1 too and much easier idle state with no limited field of view.
That's more like her outbox.