Having said that, we still definitely want one of these...
What is old is new again, what is out-of-date will become retro and cool, and now it looks like Apple are looking into their our technological past for the next step in their AirPods line.
Apple have put forward a
patent application for an AirPods that would see the case include a touchscreen display, allowing users to adjust the volume, to skip to the next/previous songs, etc. directly from the case, without having to take out their phone or go back to their laptops to make the adjustments.
https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1643770395919634433?s=20
This new changes could arrive not long after Apple released their AirPods Pro 2 in December 2022, but there is no guarantee that these patents will go beyond the ideas stage.
However, headphones competitor JBL (owned by Samsung) are expected to launch their new flagship model, the JBL Tour Pro 2, in the next few months, and that device is touted to have a touchscreen LCD which will allow users to customise their audio settings, much like what Apple have applied to patent for their device above.
And if you're thinking to yourself "That is all well and good and I will probably want to own one, but doesn't it look/sound a lot like an iPod Shuffle?", well... you're not wrong.
Less than a year after Apple officially discontinued the iPod, there are definitely some similarities to be found between the new AirPods case and the old iPod Shuffle, but we imagine it will also allow users to actually pick the next song on the album they're listening to, and not just pick another track from their library at random.
At least, we certainly hope that will be the (AirPods) case...
Main image via Apple
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