Apple planning solar-powered iPods
Patent spotted
27 May 2008 9:50 GMT / By Katie Scott
Rumours are flying about that Apple is going green and wants to bring the power of the sun to its iPods and some laptops.
The MacRumours website has published details of a patent that will see some Apple devices using solar power.
The design is unique as it places the solar panels beneath the devices' LCD screens, which gets round the problem of having a surface area of light detectors big enough to actually power a device.
Other companies have found that solar panels often actually ended up having to be bigger than the device that they were powering.
Apple is suggesting that its new design could actually bring the physical footprint of its devices down, according to the reports online.
The MacRumours site claims that if the design actually works, iPods and MacBooks could run without any mains charge.
Sceptics, however, are already saying that this is simply not going to happen anytime soon.
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