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Apple has always gone for the minimalist look in anything it makes, and now new documentation suggests it wants to get rid of unsightly zippers, closures and fasteners and instead use magnets.
Perhaps the closest thing Apple will come to making clothes is the recent “Ted Lasso” goods, or health monitoring gloves. But it certainly looks at ways to make better bags and accessories, and the suggestions work for all clothing as well.
The newly granted patent “Magnetic Fastener,” is concerned with replacing all zippers because they are just too awful.
“A zipper is opened and closed by moving a slider between two sets of interdigital teeth,” says the patent. “Some fasteners use magnets. For example, a magnetic closure can be used to secure an opening in a pocket. Fasteners can also be formed from snaps and buttons.”
You know that, but you may not have put a stopwatch on how fast it takes to open or close a zipper. And unless you’re a dressmaker trying to hide all the seams, you might not be so fussy about what a zipper looks like.
Apple is fussing about it all.
“Zippers can be unsightly and can be time consuming to open and close,” the patent continues. “Buttons such as magnetic closures may be quicker to open and close than zippers, but may not seal large openings satisfactorily.”
Do not start Apple with buttons. It is sometimes “unable to form sufficiently tight seals for openings,” and in any case it is “even more time-consuming to use than zippers.”
Apple’s proposal is to use magnets, and possibly quite a few of them.
“The magnetic attachment may have first and second portions on opposite sides of the seam,” Apple continues. “When the magnetic fastener is operated in a closed condition, the magnets in the first and second portions attract each other and pull the first and second portions of the fastener together to close the seam.”
“When the magnetic fastener is operated in an open condition,” says Apple, “the magnets in the first and second portions repel each other and push the first and second portions of the fastener apart to open the seam.”
In other words, magnets can securely close a seam. But you can also open that seam without too much time-consuming effort.
Maybe we’ll never see an Apple crate, or an Apple gown, with magnetic currents. Most likely, we will not see a catwalk fashion show when Apple returns to live deals.
And some of this technology is already in use, for example in the AirPods Max Smart Case.
Yet that particular use of magnets to make this kind of bag is addressed in a separate, newly disclosed patent called “Enclosures with Flexible Magnetic Closures and Closures.”
There has never been a patent that has not tried to cover every conceivable use of its proposals. And there were many, many Apple patents that did not lead to specific products.
But Apple could do clothes now. It can make you say “Hey, Siri, fasten my shoelaces,” and the resizing laces include, as in “Back to the Future Part II.”