Apple Computer is eyeing a technology that could make the iPod more likely to survive a fall.

The company has applied for a patent on technology that would allow a portable media player to detect when it is falling and then stop reading or writing to the hard drive. Such technology would work by detecting the acceleration that accompanies a drop.

“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 Dec. 16. “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.”

IBM began including a similar feature on its ThinkPad notebook line in October 2003. Apple’s patent application was filed in June 2003, but it wasn’t published until last week.

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