A few new Apple patents hint at a future when your iPod knows where your head is and how you listen to individual music and video tracks.
The first patent, dug up by MacRumors, seems tailored towards 3D displays. When viewing a three-dimensional image on the screen, the device would track the location of your head using several possible approaches, including infrared, electromagnetic signals or video. Looking at the screen from different angles would change the displayed angle of the object accordingly.
In essence, Apple would be making 3D displays less of an illusion and more of an actual third dimension to explore, letting users peer around objects they see on the screen. The patent itself is short on practical examples, naming only the ability to explore a product during online shopping. I'm not sure I'd rather move my head around than navigate with a mouse, but this could be very cool for gaming (imagine physically looking around a corner in first-person shooters).
The other new patent seems more grounded in current technology. It describes a way for iPods and iPhones to learn your listening behavior for individual tracks and respond accordingly. So let's say there's one song whose introduction you can't stand, and you always skip past it. The technology would learn this, and eventually skip that section for you. It would also learn volumes or equalizer settings for songs and apply them automatically over time. Another example shows the player dimming out songs in your playlist that you often skip over.
A third patent, somewhat related to the second, measures battery life and lets you know if there's enough juice left to play a video. If not, users get a warning and an option to degrade video quality.
I wouldn't mind seeing those last two features in a future operating system update for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but I'm skeptical of the head-tracking patent, as the concept just seems to abstract. Of course, none of these ideas are guaranteed to materialize. We're still waiting on the Bluetooth headband, shoe wear-out sensor and extreme sports monitor.
