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iPhone patent points to third-party widgets in iOS 5 Notification Center


Unofficial widgets for jailbroken iOS 5 devices: SpringPrefs (left) and Music Center (right)

The Apple patent win for the original iPhone interface has generated a lot of buzz, also causing quite a turmoil among industry watchers for fears that the California-based gadget maker would sue rivals that dare implement capacitive multitouch interfaces. That patent, however, also holds interesting clues hidden from plain sight that point to third-party widgets for the iOS 5 Notification Center. RazorianFly explains:

As seen above, Apple specifically mentions “User-Created Widget(s)” as well as something called the“Widget Creator Module”. Apple’s market-blowing patent describes the possible user-creation of such widgets, which could, (theoretically), run on devices such as the iPhone, and iPad.

With patent clues and iOS 5 hooks in place, all Apple needs to do is enable some public APIs to allow for the creation and installation of third-party widgets in the iOS 5 Notification Center…

As 9to5Mac reported, some developers have managed to prove that pulling this off is technically feasible, creating proof of concept widgets. In addition, the agile jailbreak community has jumped on the opportunity to adapt tons of existing system tweaks and user interface themes for the iOS 5 Notification Center. Considering Apple actually borrowed some of the best jailbreak tweaks for iOS 5, including the new Notification Center feature, we think there’s a reasonable chance that they will open up iOS 5 Notification Center to widgets from third-parties and distribute them via a dedicated App Store section.

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