Apple's next breakthrough: Holograms?

Second, Apple’s hologram technology will be different—and completely realistic. The Apple patent states, “Each viewer could be presented … with complete freedom of movement … without the need for special viewing goggles or headgear.”

Read that as the hologram will remain realistic even if you and your friends move around the room, and you won’t look like a doofus watching it. The Apple patent also explains how the monitoring sensor would pick up and replicate ambient lighting in the room—creating, say, a projection of a business colleague floating at your conference table with light from the window gleaming in her hair.

Finally, in perhaps its most unique trick, the Apple hologram system would detect who is watching, and be able to display different images to different people. The patent says “individual observers … can be uniquely identified based upon distinctive personal characteristics (e.g., height, shoulder width, distinctive outline, etc.),” allowing outbound beamed projections to be changed for each observer.