Thought some of you might be nerd enough to appreciate reading patents in the morning.
Can Apple really patent his? Isn't this basically Granular synthesis?
I gotta try and make this.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2010/0100212.html

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/Picture_2.png

not realy
in granular synthesis you change the playbackrate of a small block and change the start position

here you crossfade with itself (rate < 1)
or with the next one (rate >1)

however the concept looks interesting... would love to try it out

didn't read the patent tho

@slur said:

not realy
in granular synthesis you change the playbackrate of a small block and change the start position

These aren't really requirements for granular synthesis, though; they're just some of the many parameters that can be manipulated. Granular synthesis is pretty flexible and open-ended. This looks to me like some kind of granular time-stretching.