Apple Computer has reportedly applied for permission to commence the design of a safety feature for its iPod music players which would protect the device when falling.

Technology detects the acceleration accompanying a drop and then immediately stops reading and writing to the hard drive.

Apple is said to be applying for a patent now although the application may come unstuck as similar technology is already in use in some products.

“The portable-computing device protects its disk drive by monitoring for such accelerations and operating to avoid usage of the disk drive during periods of acceleration,” Apple said in the patent application, which was published earlier this month.

“Through such protection, the likelihood of damage to the disk drive or loss of data stored on the disk drive is able to be substantially reduced.”

This news follows several other patent applications by Apple in recent weeks including for video-conferencing and music submitting technology.