By Shelly Brisbin
April 5, 2023 10:44 AM PT
I don’t need another touchscreen
The speculation du jour, based on a recently unearthed Apple patent filing, is that one day, AirPod cases could include an interactive touch screen. You could presumably play, stop and advance through audio with a press, much as you can on a phone or Apple Watch. And there’s a squeeze interface, too, the patent filing shows.
I’ve read some head-scratching reactions, and one extremely gooey take claiming a touchscreen case is super awesome and a quintessentially Apple thing to do. Some of these divergent reactions come from the same Web site. Which is great to see.
Except, I’m not carrying my AirPods case around most of the time. Not unless the AirPods are in it.
As delightful a thing as the case for my third-gen AirPods is, the last thing I want to do is clutter up a pocket – a rare enough thing in women’s clothing – with a boxy square hunk of plastic. I have a phone and I have a watch, either of which are more likely within reach when I need to adjust my tunes or podcasts, not to mention the AirPods’ own controls.
I’m a journalist, so I fact-checked myself on this point: when I took my morning walk around the building at work yesterday, my AirPods were in my ears. Where was the case? Back on my desk. When a semi-urgent Slack alert this morning caught me in the kitchen, stirring up oatmeal, it interrupted today’s episode of Mac OS Ken, so I pinched off the AirPod to take a look. Where was the case? Still on my nightstand charger.
Truthfully, the most awkward handful of tech I sometimes lug from one part of my home or office to another is the combination of my iPhone and an AirPod case. If I can leave the case untouched and unlooked for over a couple of hours, I’m happy. The case is doing its job, waiting for me to bring the no-longer-needed AirPods back to it for a charge.
Sure, I carry the case when I’m traveling. There are little pockets that fit it nicely in both my laptop bag and my purse. But I’m not expecting to reach into those tiny spaces, hoping the correct side of the case is facing outward, and then pressing a button. Even when I’m not wearing an Apple Watch, I prefer using the AirPods themselves, or even the phone.
Will the AirPods touchscreen era see a flourishing third-party case-for-your-case market? Maybe a little clutch purse that holds your phone and your case, including a window for access to the screen? If you’re a dude, I’m imagining some sort of weird holster apparatus. Yeah. No.
Look, Apple may one day give us a touchscreen AirPod case, and I may end up with one. But it’s not joining my list of most wished-for hardware features.
[Shelly Brisbin is a radio producer, host of the Parallel podcast, and author of the book iOS Access for All. She's the host of Lions, Towers & Shields, a podcast about classic movies, on The Incomparable network.]