Apple files patent for iPod Bluetooth Headset

Apple has filed a patent for a device that seems to be an iPod Bluetooth headset, with an order of other capabilities on the side, that has a bit of a SyFy Channel taste about it.

Looked at from a different standpoint, the device looks a bit like what the result would be if an iPod Shuffle and an Apple Bluetooth headset became involved in a Borg-Klingon mating ritual. Either way, the patent application recently filed by Apple looks like a harbinger of things to come. Whether or not you like this particular vision probably depends on your aesthetic sensibilities. Are you a Rembrandt fan or an adulator of  Picasso?

If nothing else, the device would seem to be multitalented, according to a CNET story. The following is a quote from the application: “Additional functionality in a wireless headset allows it to be used during times that the external device with which it is wirelessly coupled is not being used, but when the headset is nevertheless being worn. This is accomplished by integrating a media player into the wireless headset. The media player may be an audio player, capable, e.g., of playing audio files such as MPEG-3 (“MP3″) files. Optionally, the media player may include a recording function as well, so that a user can record voice notes.”

If that were not enough, the patent continues, “In addition, if the external device is a telephone (mobile or landline), the availability of a recording function could make it possible for the user to record all or part of a conversation. Similarly, voicemail messages received on the user’s telephone could be uploaded into the headset for later off-line playback. Media files recorded by the headset also could be downloaded to the external device.”

Somehow, one gets visions of everyone in all walks of life plugged in and talking loudly into space or singing tonelessly to a song you can’t hear, sort of like that obnoxious guy that always seems to be at the airport no matter where you go. Maybe it’s time that the terminally wired get into to sub-vocalization devices so the rest of us don’t have to hear about it.

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