Apple fans are concerned that a new patent filed by the company will mean an ad-supported operating system. Expand

Apple fans are concerned that a new patent filed by the company will mean an ad-supported operating system.

Apple fans are calling it the cyber equivalent of the holiday time share sales pitch: attend a seminar for a few hours on our wonderful holiday village and we'll give you a weekend there absolutely free.

The Apple brand has never been keen to indulge in cost cutting and fans have always been willing to cough up extra cash for the company's shiny, premium priced products.

But a new patent suggests that the San Francisco-based company may consider selling their famous iPods and iMacs at discounted prices, as long as consumers are willing to listen to compulsory advertising.

A new patent application filed by Apple in the United States has revealed that technology giant is in the middle of copyrighting software technology which will force consumers to watch or listen to adverts on their products.

Described in the application as "enforcement routine" software, consumers will be unable to skip the adverts and may even be asked questions by the device to ensure that the user has fully understood the advert properly.

Those listening to adverts on their iPods, for instance, may be asked to press a series of button combinations to tell the device that they have been paying attention during the advert.

A wrong answer or failure to respond could result in the device being locked down for a temporary amount of time. On the plus side, however, the application suggests that believes advertising revenues generated by the devices would enable Apple to sell their products at cheaper prices to customers.

The revelation of the patent, which was released to the public by the US Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month but only filtered out online yesterday, has begun to cause waves of discomfort within the blogging community.

One commentator described the application as "the most invasive, demeaning, anti-utopian and downright horrible piece of cross-platform software technology that anybody's ever thought of."

Like any successful technology company, Apple regularly files experimental patent applications, many of which never make it off the drawing board. But fans are concerned that this particular piece of software has backing which goes right to the top of the company.

Apple's CEO Steve Jobs, who has been battling ill health in recent years, is the first of five people named on the patent application, something which has only happened four times in the past 30 applications on which he has been a co-inventor since March 2008.