Yesterday, the US Patent & Trademark Office published an interesting Apple patent generally related to a multi-dimensional 2D/3D remote control, able to employ both absolute and relative positioning detection techniques, for providing an ultimate on-screen position accuracy.
Basically, we're talking about a remote that will have a photosensor, an accelerometer or a gyroscope, providing you with the ability to zoom in on part of an image as you wish, by simply pushing a button!
If you think about the photosensor and accelerometer...you could easily arrive to the iPhone, of course! For now, nothing is official, but probably we may be able to use our iPhones as 3D remotes in the not-so-distant future, and if that happens, probably the iPod touches will also be up to this task...
At last, it seems the patent claims even more devices could qualify as such remotes, due to the fact that input could include a touchscreen (the iPhone and iPod touch, as we just said), as well as some sort of clickwheel, and that leads us to the iPod classic and Nano.
These being said, I guess we should add one more item to the list of expected Apple events for the summer, don't you think?