Apple’s iTunes Spiral Interface Would Put Your Music In Hypnovision [Apple]

Apparently Apple is barely one hypno-machine faraway from total world domination. As a minimum, that’s my first impression of their patented iTunes Spiral makeover. That is, as they say, trippy.

I’ll say this for the iTunes Spiral; it might save a while. Today your choices for viewing your library are scads of text or Cover Flow. Both perfectly functional, neither particularly exciting. What Spiral would do is break your music down into three levels of granularity. So when you’re looking down a Genre vortex, which you could navigate deeper into the Album abyss.

In step with Patently Apple :

Each graphic displayed along the spiral could include pictures, graphics, text, or a mix thereof, and could take on any suitable shape (e.g., a square, rectangle, ball, circle, triangle, or diamond). As an instance, each graphic could include album cover art representative of a selected genre…

In some embodiments, an iPhone could receive a clockwise or counterclockwise input as from a circular or elliptical motion received on a click wheel or on a bit screen, to switch the presented music… We may even must now consider that the mention of a click wheel in this patent is usually taking a ” virtual” implementation under consideration.

You’d then spiral further down the rabbit hole until you found what you were in search of. But it surely doesn’t stop there!

The patent also covers ” Helix” and ” Map” implementations, the latter of which apparently places your Rap music somewhere within the vicinity of Boise:
Is this the longer term of iTunes? Not really this exactly. But you possibly can easily see how elements from these patents-which feel rather like the notes from a highly structured brainstorming section-could sneak their way into the interface. And while you’re frightened of being put under Spiral’s hypnotic spell, no fear; the patent clearly says it may be turned off at any time. Assuming you may have any free will left at that point. [ Patently Apple ]

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This post is tagged: art representative, elliptical motion, first impression, virtual implementation, world domination