iSight and Microphone Patent

In March 2003 a couple of new patent applications were published from Apple. The most descriptive patent filed in July 2002 described a method for to filtering out background noise from two independent microphones -- allowing for improved Speech recognition by eliminating extraneous background noise. This spawned speculation of renewed speech efforts by Apple as well as assistive devices built in to future displays or Macs.

Apple's iSight appears to incorporate at least some of this technology to improve audio capture:

iSight includes a built-in, dual element noise-suppressing microphone that delivers crystal clear audio. The microphone takes in the sound from both microphone elements, then determines which sounds are essential to the conversation with an algorithm that filters out extraneous noise.