Steve Jobs wears one style of glasses. One. His iconic John Lennon-style shades are as much a part of his mystique as his Levis 501s and black mock turtle neck. Were Jobs to appear at an Keynote without  any of these essentials on his person, the earth could very well spin of its orbital axis and hurtle into the sun. Apple understands that such a cataclysm could effect their bottom line. That's most likely why they filed a patent for a glasses-free 3D projection system.

You know, because there's nothing more embarrassing than taking off your glasses so that you can demonstrate a new product, but accidentally destroy the planet in the process.

According to the patent, Apple would see visual content 3D processed by your brain into by projecting each pixel of a movie onto a textured, reflective surface. The reflected pixels would then be bounced into the viewer's eyes separately, thus producing the stereoscopic effect. All of the 3D magic would be controlled by a computer that tracked the locations of the eyes of any viewer in the room, filtering the 3D content to them in such a way that no matter their position, they could still enjoy the video being projected.

While all of this sounds like some pretty hefty pie in the sky, it's always best to remember that most of the tech we now take for granted once seemed outrageous to us too.

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