Apple introduced a new patent for what could be an upcoming product: The Smart Bike. This news appeared in “Patently Apple” site, where included also several screenshots about this new patent of a bicycle that could connect with several devices; plus some other benefits.
This smart bike will use and provide several features, take a quick look:
The system could include bicycle, sensors, display, and electronic device (iPod or iPhone).- Just as in the Nike + iPod program, the user will be able to map their own bike courses on a map or view bike courses of other riders if you’re looking for a particular path in respect to distance or difficulty.
- The sensors, display and electronic device could communicate via communications network; which covers GPRS, CDMA, EV-DO, EDGE, 3GSM, DECT, IS-136/TDMA, iDen, LTE and/or others.
- The sensors could detect any suitable metric related to the use of the bicycle including for example speed, pace, acceleration, distance, time, incline, decline, altitude, torque, power generated, cadence, gear and derailleur settings, heart rate, calories burned, weather, and temperature.
- iPhone or iPod could be used to automatically or in response to a user instruction, record video, audio, or take photographs reflecting the course, and geo-tag the generated media for publishing.
The name iBike does not appear in the patent, but it sure sounds like a cool name.
Classics, 
Nanos, Shuffles, Touches – Apple have made so many different shapes of iPod that you need adaptors for practically every accessory you can buy. Apple likes things to look sleek and neat, so having fiddly bits of plastic to swap over for each of the many iPods they would like you to buy (you couldn’t possibly take your 60GB classic jogging with you!) is not acceptable, and so for all the neat freaks and must-have-it Apple fans, they’re developing a universal dock to accommodate all different shapes and sizes. They’ve filed a patent for, as they phrase it:
A dock for supporting a plurality of differently-shaped electronic devices, the dock comprising: a housing; a connector coupled to the housing; and a compressible support layer positioned at least partially about the connector, wherein at least a portion of the compressible support layer compresses to the shape of at least a portion of an electronic device that is attached to the connector.
Featuring:
A method for supporting a plurality of differently-shaped electronic devices in a dock that includes a compressible support layer positioned at least partially about a connector, the method comprising:attaching an electronic device to the connector of the dock; compressing at least a first portion of the compressible support layer with at least a portion of the bottom of the electronic device when the electronic device is attached to the connector; and supporting at least a portion of a side of the electronic device with at least a second portion of the compressible support layer when the electronic device is attached to the connector.
Which translates to a standard iPod connector in the middle of a squashy or springy surround, which you compress part of by pushing your iPod into, the uncompressed part supporting the sides of the device, perhaps a bit like one of those pin-art pads that were fashionable around when the Lawnmower Man came out.
