Sixteen new Apple patents, from CoverFlow to iDVD

The USPTO published a whole slew of new patent applications from Apple today, covering everything from iChat to some CoverFlow animation. Patently Apple has the whole writeup as usual. Probably the most interesting thing among them is a "virtual keyboard for media players" that uses a modified QWERTY keyboard, with more than one letter on each key. That doesn't seem like an idea that Apple will ever use, but maybe that was one of the prototypes that was originally being worked on for the iPhone.

There are also some more technical patents for iChat video encoding and error adjustments on touchscreens, as well as overall patents for the MacBook Air SuperDrive and iDVD. It seems like the USPTO is just cleaning out Apple's old patents -- most of these were filed back in 2007. Now, maybe they can set the legal patent team up on newer accomplishments.
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