Apple announced new technology today that will increase the safety of its popular portable digital music player, the iPod. The system is designed to warn listeners of impending danger that they may be too oblivious to notice.
The company chose Wesleyan University as a proving ground for their new product. Wesleyan Public Safety was excited about the upgrade, as they had noticed a direct correlation between the increase in iPod usage on campus and the number of accidents involving students.
The new technology consists of small monitors embedded within the signature white earbuds of the iPod. The sensors are able to detect a wide array of dangerous situations and relay this information to the user via verbal cues. These warnings can be given in either a male or female voice, depending on listener preference.
In a test run involving a Wesleyan student, the system successfully detected and warned of an approaching car, an angry dog, belligerent townies, a deep puddle, and five separate incidents of envious students glaring at the white headphones.
“This is a great improvement over the old system,” said Director of Public Safety Maryann Wiggins. “We had students getting into all sorts of trouble because they couldn’t hear approaching danger. Now they’ll know when they need to watch out.”
Some problems still exist with the technology, however. One test student immediately pulled his iPod out of his pocket as it warned him of a small child in his path.
“Aw…crap! I don’t care about the kid. Just do not interrupt the bridge of this song. It rocks, man,” he said. The student quickly disabled the audio warning mode and continued down the street.
Five minutes later the relatively undamaged iPod was found down the road from an accident scene, displaying the message, “Ford Excursion approaching from left side. Suggest evasive maneuvers.”
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