Future Apple devices, including Apple MacBooks could automatically expel liquids on ingress

iPhone, iPad and Mac users may one day have one less thing to worry about, according to Apple’s latest patent, describing a system designed to impede the ingress of water through speakers outlets, on iPhones, and possibly other devices.

The usefulness of this design may not be immediately apparent to most users, however, a device’s audio speakers are one of the two most common ways for water and moisture to enter, and cause long term damage.

Anyone who has owned an iPhone or iPad for an extended period of time, will notice a slight rust developing on the inside of the power connector, and the speakers. Full or even partial immersion of a device into a liquid, is not a requirement for rust to develop, as the moisture in the air is often sufficient to cause slow, long term damage, especially for consumers living in locations that are often humid, or featuring consistently wet weather patterns.

In this latest patent, Apple has devised a system that uses a variety of methods to repel liquids, preventing them from entering a device through the speakers.

A typical use case could involve an iPhone or iPad, which, upon detecting the ingress of water from the speakers, would activate the expulsion system, pushing the liquid back out, using a change in static charge, or other forms of generating a hydrophobic electric charge..

In another iteration of the design, the vibrations generated by the speakers themselves could be used to repel liquid, using a single pulse of acoustic energy, or a prolonged frequency.

Water repellant MacBooks

Section 0023 and 0024 of the patent’s claims elaborate on some interesting applications, which apply not only to iPhones, but to Mac devices as well:

“...Other types of devices include, without limitation, a laptop computer, a desktop computer, a cellular phone, a digital media player, a wearable device, a health-monitoring device, a tablet computer, a mobile computer, a telephone, and/or other electronic device...”

By this token, it’s not clear whether we can hope for waterproof MacBooks, but there are indications that Apple could be exploring possible ways to protect all devices from moisture, at least on a superficial level, when a device is exposed to rain, or extreme humidity.