iPhones to Be Able to Remotely Access Your Music Library: Apple Patent Application

Downloaded some new tunes from the iTunes Store, but forgot to synch them to your iPhone or iPod Touch? Drat, right? For now, anyway. A new patent application filed by Apple seems to point to them working on a method for you to stream your music over the Internet to your device.

The patent filing (24 pages!) titled "Remote Access of Media Items" is credited to Apple employees David Heller and Thomas Mavrakakis. It describes ways for remotely accessing media files stored locally in the iTunes library of a Mac or PC, using the Internet via wi-fi or cellular.

Now how cool would that be? Of course, the question would also arise: how painful would AT&T's reported poor 3G coverage be then?

Only the metadata about your music: artist name, track name, etc., etc.) would be synched to your device. In the language of the patent, these would be "virtual media items." If you try to play a virtual song, your device would use its network connection to go back to the iTunes library on your PC and stream the actual song from there.

The patent also suggests that such technology could be used for P2P Zune-like music sharing.

[0011]In accordance with yet another embodiment, one or both of the network devices can be a portable device such as a media player. Thus, media item content data associated with the virtual media items can be accessed and downloaded remotely. Similarly, a virtual media item can be played remotely.

[0012]In accordance with yet another embodiment, the electronic devices and network devices can be coupled to one another via a communications link that may use a network such as a wired or wireless local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), or a cellular network. In accordance with one embodiment, in order to enable the network devices to retrieve media item content data from one another, the network devices remain on and connected to the network. For instance, a personal computer can be turned on and connected to the Internet to enable a portable device to access the media items stored on the personal computer.

This would be cool, and besides the example given above of forgetting to synch new items, many already have libraries simply too large for their devices. But of course, there are some obvious snags.

• The aforementioned connectivity issue
• Possible network throttling by ISPs
• Usage caps by ISPs (on your home system)
• Usage caps on your "unlimited data plan" (they exist!)

And to someone like me, leaving your PC and all your network hardware on all the time at home: how un-green can you get. Still, although the existence of a patent filing doesn't necessarily mean it will make it into reality, even if granted, this sounds like one that might make it into an eventual iPhone / iPod Touch software update.