Talking iPods

chrisb33 writes to tell us the next iteration of the iPod may talk you through the menus instead of just relying on text. The Scotsman speculates on this new technology based on a patent filed by Apple in the US. From the article: "The patent reveals the idea is driven largely by safety considerations. It states: 'A user will have difficulty navigating the interface in "eyes-busy" situations. Such activities include, for example, driving an automobile, exercising and crossing the street." The patent also makes clear that text-to-speech technology is likely to spread to other hand-held electronic devices such as mobile phones and palm-top computers."

Comments

Still sounds dangerous...

[Anonymous Coward]

If MP3's are still arranged in a geometric structure (trees of various sortings) and unless some new metaphor is introduced, iPods will still require spatial reasoning to navigate. While driving, I argue that there is one task and one task alone that should be getting full spation reasoning awareness: driving.

What makes this worse is the translation from spatial to textual. This requires the user to reconstruct the spatial, requiring even more concentration.

How about voice recognition? Call out the artist or album and listen away!

maybe, maybe not.

[Aqua OS X]

The author seems fairly certain that a patent equals an imminent new feature, but that's not the case. A patent is a patent. Apple may implement this in 6 Gen iPods, they may wait for later revisions, they may never implement the feature.

Technology companies, especially Apple, have piles patented software features, devices, etc that have never seen the light of day. And speaking of piles, one of which is actually called "piles."

  As I recall, Apple also has also recently patented several different new hardware interfaces for the iPod. You can bet money they're not all going to be implemented. Heck, none of them may be implemented.