Apple rethinking earbud's design with "ultrasonic bonding"

[dgstorm]

Apple has been known to pay a great deal of attention to details, and for some reason it has turned its sharp laser beam attention on its popular white earbuds. How do we know? Well a recent patent publication with the U.S. Patent and Trade Office offers indicates that the Cupertino company is thinking of re-designing iPhone and iPod earbuds giving them a “unibody” structure.

At the moment, one can find on the market a rich variety of headsets and earbuds which include other components. The problem, says Apple, is that some of the components when brought together lead to and “abrupt and aesthetically displeasing” experience.

With the new "ultrasonic bonding" technique Apple has in mind, the component pieces will be melted together from the start, instead of using adhesive, giving the illusion that the piece is made of plastic and is not segmented.

Apple has been giving the whole earbuds concepts a real mental makeover, thus publishing a separate patent application which describes another road the company might take in order to improve the earbuds. It turns out that holes are needed in the earbud caps for sound to travel to its destination, but the creation of these holes is somehow a tricky business. Apple has been thinking of trying to polish the cap off the earbud so all traces of the hole would be cleaned up.

The MacBook Air and MacBook Pro series already use the unibody enclosures, thus demonstrating how a single piece of material could be use to create the entire body.

By Radu

Source: Apple looking to build 'unibody' earbuds through ultrasonic bonding