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Apple seeks patent for user-configurable progress bar

Slow software will be made to 'fess up to FAILS

Apple looks to be trying to do something about the flaky nature of software progress bars by making them user-configurable so they report when a machine has missed its estimate of the time needed to complete a task.

The fruity 'puter company has applied to patent a ”Smart Progress Indicator” that will improve on current efforts by offering colour-coded indications of progress on either a bar or a pie chart.

Interestingly, Cupertino also imagines the indications of progress may be user-configurable, possibly even with video or images.

Apple's application suggests “the smart progress indicator can include triggers such that the smart progress indicator can have different colors or patterns depending on whether or not one or more conditions are satisfied” and “the smart progress indicator can dynamically change data sources for the completed portion of the task or for the whole task based on the conditions.”

The idea seems to be that progress bars, or pie charts, will be able to display user-selected patterns or colours that change as different parts of a task are completed. The patent application even suggests Apple will 'fess up when things go slower than expected, as depicted below.

Apple's smart progress bar patent application illustrated

You can't stop progress, but Aple's smart progress bar will report when it's stopped

At a guess, this looks like a small UI tweak for either or both of MacOS and iOS. But the application's details also hint at being able to name different parts of a task and to report on the progress of each. With lots of applications now dependent on external processes – think all those lookups web pages do as they load – Apple might also be trying to patent a name-and-shame indicator that shows just what's responsible for slow service. ®

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