We would type that Apple is taking over our lives, but the tech giant has been doing that for years, if we’re being honest. Apple phones, Apple Music, AppleTV, Apple Watch, Apple Fitness, Siri, MacBooks…the list is never-ending.
Last week, the discovery of a recently filed patent by Apple found that the company is looking into making haptic socks — like VR, but for your feet.
According to Tech Radar, if this actually makes it into product form, it could be beloved by fitness buffs and even gamers. For the former, it could “spice up” your usual jog by “transporting you to different terrains”; for gamers, it could give people playing in smaller rooms “the chance to explore larger spaces” — by using virtual or augmented reality.
And the latest? A potential haptic mattress.
But first, let’s rewind here — and go into what ‘haptic’ actually means. According to Miriam Webster, who officially added the word into their dictionary in 2018, haptic is “the use of electronically or mechanically generated movement that a user experiences through the sense of touch as part of an interface.”
As for what that means Apple wise? Well, if you’ve got an iPhone in your hand, hold one of the apps down (as opposed to touching it to open) and see what happens. You should be getting a whole list of things you can do with the app — including its removal — without even opening the app itself. That’s Apple’s Haptic Touch; it’s something the brand says “lets you do things faster.”
Circling back to Apple’s haptic mattress — it’s only at patent stage, just like the socks — it’s more so a haptic mattress cover, that would go on top of the bed (but under the sheets). Different cells on the mattress could inflate and deflate, producing impulses the user (sleeper) would be able to feel.
If you’re wondering what on earth something like that could potentially be used for, well Tech Radar has you covered. They believe it would predominantly be used to track sleep, but unlike a fitness tracker that could do the same thing, it could nudge you to a better part of the bed if you’re sleeping poorly elsewhere on the mattress.
It may work as an alarm, or even have mattress capabilities. We’ll have to wait and see if it even comes to fruition.
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