Today the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that primarily relates to improving the audio playback of music and the improvement of communication clarity with Siri.

HomePod Cooling System

Apple notes in their patent filing that conventionally, heat sinks and other structures for increasing an area available for heat transfer from electrical components have been used alone or in combination with one or more fans and/or ductwork to remove heat dissipated by such electrical components. However, conventional cooling approaches can be unsuitable for some audio appliances, as such conventional approaches can degrade perceived audio quality during playback, as well as impair near-field and far-field speech observed by a microphone transducer.

Accordingly, an approach to cool an audio appliance with little or no impairment to audio playback or speech observation is needed. As well, systems, methods, and components to cool one or more temperature-sensitive areas in an audio appliance are needed. Further, a need exists for augmented cooling of one or more temperature-sensitive regions of an audio appliance. The principles disclosed in Apple's patent filing overcome many problems in the prior art and address one or more of the aforementioned or other needs.

According to Apple, the improved cooling for audio appliances will primarily apply to iDevices and more specifically HomePod, as their patent graphics prove out.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 illustrates an embodiment of an audio appliance (HomePod); FIG. 3 schematically illustrates airflow throughout the audio appliance shown in FIG. 1 by virtue of loudspeaker-diaphragm oscillations; and FIG. 7 illustrates a schematic block diagram of control logic to augment cooling in an audio appliance.

To review the technical aspects behind this invention check out patent application 20190166431 here. Apple's patent application being published today was originally filed on November 30, 2017. Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.

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