Patents are the best way to find out what Apple is working on, or at least what it is researching. In this case, what it is investigating is improving the AirPods charging case to turn it into a kind of wireless iPod. A patent for which there may be years to go, if it ever takes shape in a final product, but it clearly catches the eye.
Apple is exploring the possibility of including a touchscreen in the AirPods case. So says a patent recently published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office that they have discovered in Patently Apple. A patent that is already a few years old, but that allows us to imagine a device very different from what we now call AirPods.
A patent full of ideas
The patent, filed by Apple in September 2021 and titled “Graphical User Interface Devices, Methods, and Interactions with a Headphone Case,” shows several images of the AirPods and a touchscreen on the front of the case. The patent also indicates that the inclusion of an interactive user interface in the headphone holster would improve the user experience and usability of the holster. With it we could control audio sources and interact with associated applications on the connected device.
Apple describes several possible uses for this touchscreen on the AirPods case. For example, the screen would allow users to control Apple Music through a capacitive touch interface, providing feedback to keystrokes. The purpose of this feedback would be that we could control audio playback, adjust the volume, bookmark favorite songs and interact with the music in other ways and without having to look at the screen. Something, all said, that is not at all possible to do currently with the iPhone or Apple Watch, where we need to see the screen to make sure what we are pressing.
In addition, the patent explores that the AirPods case would also respond to specific gestures, such as taps and swipes, to navigate content on the screen and call Siri. Apple even suggests that squeezing the case could be a way to change the AirPods’ listening mode, likely referring to noise cancellation and transparency.
By integrating an interactive touchscreen in this way, Apple argues that “shortcomings associated with user control of wireless headphones are reduced or eliminated.” However, as with any patent filed, this technology is unlikely to become an actual product soon, if ever.
The patent, meanwhile, goes a bit further and also suggests that the AirPods case could include additional processors and memory modules to execute specific instructions that would normally be done by the connected iPhone or Apple Watch. For example, the touchscreen could provide interactive access to iPhone apps.
That would turn AirPods into a wireless iPod.
The truth is that what Apple proposes has a very interesting reading. While it is true that once we connect our AirPods to our iPhone or Apple Watch it makes little sense to go to the charging case of the headphones to pass track, but it does give it an autonomy as a device.
It’s easy to imagine much more iPod-like AirPods. You store a few songs inside the case itself, perhaps syncing them to the Mac, and you have an all-in-one for listening to music. A simpler device and a price much lower than the AirPods-iPhone or AirPods-Apple Watch alternative that allows us to enjoy quality music and that, also, is much more all-terrain and resistant than other devices.
There are several innovations that we have seen coming to the AirPods since their launch in 2016. We can talk about the ability to locate them remotely, like when this passenger lost her AirPods on a plane, and also those yet to come, such as USB-C to the AirPods Pro. But of all the innovations, this one in particular, if it decides to make the leap from patent to final device, would define AirPods as something more. They would still be headphones, but the autonomy of the device itself would lend itself to uses that are not possible right now. In other words, Apple could turn the AirPods into a wireless iPod.
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