Apple wants to ‘advance the art of note-taking’

Apple has been granted a patent (number 9,141,698) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a semantic note-taking system that could be a competitor to the popular Evernote app. Evernote is a cross-platform, freemium app designed for note taking, organizing, and archiving. 

Apple’s patent is for a semantic note taking system and method for collecting information, enriching the information, and/or binding the information to services is provided. User-created notes are enriched with labels, context traits, and relevant data to minimize friction in the note-taking process. 

In other words, the invention is directed to collecting unscripted data, adding more meaning and use out of the data, and binding the data to services. The patent also mentions services to allow private thoughts to be published to a myriad of different applications and services “in a manner compatible with how thoughts are processed in the brain.”

User interfaces and semantic “skins” are also provided to derive meaning out of notes without requiring a great deal of user input. Linking physical objects to notes are also provided, such as through QR codes.

Due to a greater supply through Apple’s own channel and carriers than in previous years, the price for the most popular model, the 64G iPhone 6s Plus, dropped by 12% to CNY 7,900 in just one day. Extra charges for other 6s and 6s Plus models are CNY 500 to 800, compared to the normal range of CNY 4,000 to 5,000 in previous years.

In Hong Kong, the black market price for the 128G iPhone 6s Plus is HKD 9,600 (US$1,238.70). That’s significantly lower than the HKD 14,000 black market price for the iPhone 6 Plus in 2014.

Official prices for rose gold iPhone 6s models in China are CNY 5,288 for the 6G version, CNY 6,088 for the 64G model, and CNY 6,888 for the 128G smartphone. Prices for the rose gold 6s Plus are CNY 6,088 for 16G, CNY 6,888 for 64G and CNY 7,788 for 128G.