Apple wants AirPods, AirPods Pro to provide more detailed audio alerts

Apple wants its AirPods and AirPods Pro to be able to provide more detailed audio alerts as indicated by a newly granted patent (number 11,231.975) for “devices, methods, and user interfaces for providing audio audio notifications.”

About the patent

Audio notifications are widely used to convey information to a user verbally. However, Apple says that conventional methods of providing audio notifications via wearable devices such as AirPods and AirPods Pro are “cumbersome, inefficient, and limited.”

In some cases, conventional methods of providing audio notifications require multiple inputs to generate the audio notifications or to respond to the audio notifications. In other cases, conventional methods of providing audio notifications provide too little information or too much information at once. 

In still other cases, conventional methods of providing audio notifications provide audio notifications in an intrusive and distracting manner. What’s more, conventional methods take longer and require more user interaction than necessary, thereby wasting energy.  

“Apple’s goal is to provide devices such as AirPods and AirPods Pro with improved methods and interfaces for providing audio notifications, thereby increasing the effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction with such devices” The tech giant says that such methods and interfaces “may complement or replace conventional methods for providing audio notifications.”

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “An electronic device is in communication with one or more wearable audio output devices. The electronic device detects occurrence of an event and outputs, via the one or more wearable audio output devices, one or more audio notifications corresponding to the event. After beginning to output the one or more audio notifications, the electronic device detects an input directed to the one or more wearable audio output devices. 

“In response, if the input is detected within a predefined time period with respect to the one or more audio notifications corresponding to the event, the electronic device performs a first operation associated with the one or more audio notifications corresponding to the event; and, if the input is detected after the predefined time period has elapsed, the electronic device performs a second operation not associated with the one or more audio notifications corresponding to the first event.”