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The iPhone of tomorrow will be shaped like an ovoid, and it will have a wraparound screen and 3-D gesture recognition so you never again mar its stunning display with your grimy fingerprints. It also will work seamlessly with smartpens, heads-up displays and smartwatches.
Well, it will if Apple actually acts on every patent wending its way through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The patent office publishes oodles of Apple patent applications each week. It also grants a ton of them, allowing Apple to protect its IP against competitors. Whether it actually uses any of that IP in its products is another matter entirely.
Some of the designs and technologies do end up in an Apple store, of course. But a whole heck of a lot disappears into the files, and into the ether. Here's a look at a handful of Apple patents that have made headlines recently, and a look at whether the tech they describe is something we should expect in the Apple products of our dreams.
Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired 
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