Apple has devised a pocket-sized companion that (hypothetically) does all of it: music, movies AND books, sans the nagging smartphone or clumsy smartwatch. Cupertino, you’re so shut.

In a patent software printed lately by the U.S. Patent Workplace, Apple sketched out such a tool, a headphone-case-meets-pocket-computer with a touchscreen show and the prerequisite guts for flicking via songs, watching motion pictures, peeping the climate and even navigating someplace through a mapping app. Put one other approach, time is a flat circle and Apple invented the iPod once more.

Judging by the submitting, Apple sought to patent one thing harking back to a teensy iPod Contact or iPod Nano, however with a nook for charging a pair of wi-fi earbuds. That is solely a patent software, which implies there’s at the moment no (zilch! zero!) indication a supercharged AirPods case like this may exist past some doodles.

Certain, the corporate might be exploring such a tool, given its properly–established curiosity in smarter earbuds. Nevertheless, Apple might merely want to lay down some metaphorical roadblocks for the competitors through this submitting. In any case, an iPod renaissance? Sounds dreamy to me.

“The good factor about iPod is that you may take your whole music library with you, proper in your pocket,” Apple co-founder Steve Jobs mentioned a millennia in the past, in 2001. Within the years since, every thing and nothing has modified; music is arguably nonetheless the good factor in regards to the iPhone, and it’s one cause why iPod nostalgia bubbles up time and time once more — within the type of an unauthorized, iPod-inspired app; wistful tweets; a foolish smartwatch accent; film cameos; letters to an editor; and so forth.

The iPod is useless, however our nice craving for units that do much less? That lives on.