Apple has applied for a patent on technology that would allow an iPod to more likely survive a fall by detecting when it is dropping and then stop reading or writing to the hard drive. “The portable-computing device protects its disk drive by monitoring for such accelerations and operating to avoid usage of the disk drive during periods of acceleration,” Apple said in the patent application, which was published Dec. 16. “Through such protection, the likelihood of damage to the disk drive or loss of data stored on the disk drive is able to be substantially reduced.”
