Apple iPods with voice navigation? New Apple PMP coming?

For those of you that ever heard a bad song on your iPod and wanted to tell the device to "shut up", this might be your day in the sun. Apple has a patent application in today that could enable voice menus for next generation iPods or another iPod portable media player (interesting!). According to the patent, the invention

...is directed to an audio user interface that generates audio prompts that help a user navigate through the features of a computing device. The audio prompts provide audio indicators that allow a user to focus his or her visual attention upon other tasks such as driving an automobile, exercising, or crossing a street. In one embodiment the computing device is a media player (e.g., a portable audio device). In some embodiments, the computing device is a hand-held device that may have a scaled-down computer architecture that facilitates the device's portability.

Not having to scroll and read while running, driving, or sitting at a boring public event while navigating tunes is much safer. Of course at the boring public event, everyone could potentially hear you shout out "Play Culture Club". Maybe this isn't such a good idea after all. What if your favorite song was named "Stop!"; when you say "Play Stop", exactly what would happen? Hmm....

(via Unwired View)

-kct

Comments

[jk]

I think this means the iPod will talk to you and not the other way around. Of course, a lot of people probably already talk to their iPods, they just don't listen. :)

[Kevin C. Tofel]

You're correct, but my scenario was much more enjoyable! ;) The full patent info is intresting reading on how this would be implemented with TTS or Text To Speech and it also opens the door to usage on PDAs and mobile phones from what I've seen. Of course, you never want to limit this type of patent to single device, so you can't read into it too much.