Patently Apple have unearthed a patent from Apple for a cloud based media system, essentially confirming that Apple has something in the works. The patent not only shows off some of the UI design, but also a potentially very cool new feature called “partial sync.” While we don’t know anything for sure, the rumor floating around the blogs is that this feature would upload a tiny bit of your songs — like the first 15-30 seconds — and would play those while it preloads the rest from the cloud. This would kill the annoying buffer stutter that plagues streaming services.
A large amount of what Apple patents never sees the light of day, so we’ll have to see if these specifics come up when the much discussed streaming surface is announced — assuming it ever is.
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