Apple’s Headphone Patent Could Make Earbuds Way Less Annoying

Apple's new patent won't stop your headphones from becoming a tangled mess, but it may make you see the company's earbuds in a better light. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently published an Apple patent filing that promises to help improve headphone audio quality. The new technology will feature both a wired and wireless connection between earbuds and devices, as Apple Insider first reported. The double connection will help reduce audio dropout if one method stops working. The patent explains how the proposed Apple headphones could use internal memory to store audio from what you're listening to and switch to a wireless connection when necessary. The transition would be so seamless, you wouldn't even be able to tell when the headphones switched between wireless and wired connections, Mashable explains. According to the patent, the technology would work with in-ear, on-ear, and over-ear headphones. While the illustrations in the patent show wired headphones, some people have speculated that this is another sign that Apple is developing wireless headphone technology because the company plans to eliminate headphone jacks from future iPhone models. (That's still just a rumor at this point, though an unnamed source told Fast Company that the next iPhone won't have a headphone jack.) Whatever Apple's plans for wireless headphones might be, it's exciting to know that the company is looking into creating a better headphone experience for its product users. It always stinks when your audio cuts out because your headphones wires have become twisted and frayed.