Apple patents a paper bag: meet the iBag

In a move that’s likely to inspire more internet snark than wait lines around its stores, Apple has filed a patent for a white paper bag.

Actually, there’s a very good reason the tech giant has filed the patent.

The paper bag will be made from 60 percent recycled materials. White paper bags created from recycled material tend to have a particularly poor constitution caused by bleaching, so Apple has developed several alterations that ought to help its bags stay brilliantly white and kind to the environment.

The innovation worth patenting is how the company plans to support the bag as well as such a higher percentage of recycled material. Those improvements include elegant reinforcements at the folds and seams of the bag, an additional one at the bottom that adheres to the sides, and a handle “formed entirely of paper fiber yarn knitted in an 8-stitch circular knit pattern.”

Another Strange Event at Apple

Of course, Apple’s more disruptive design choice, the decision to eliminate the headphone jack from the latest iPhone model, was officially unveiled last week.  The decision was alternately praised and criticized, with some saying it was time to eliminate an unnecessary component and others saying the company was forcing expensive wireless ear buds on its loyal fanbase.

Those who still want to use conventional headphones with the new iPhone can do so – they just have to use an adapter connected to the Lightning port on the bottom of the device. However, a recent investigation by a German magazine concluded the sound quality through the port adapter is inferior to the sound coming out of the 3.5 mm headphone jack on the iPhone 6s.

“The results are clear: with an iPhone 6S, the dynamic range worsens by 4.5 dB(A) for 24-bit music files. For the iPad Air, it worsens by 3.8 dB(A),” the article said via translation. “The signal also gets worse for 16-bit music files, even if they aren’t that drastic: the dynamic range worsens by 1.8 dB(A) and 3.1 dB(A) for the iPhone and iPad, respectively.”

The difference, it should be noted, is essentially imperceptible to the human ear.

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Image credit: US Patent Office/Apple

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