If the back of your iPod or iPod Touch looks anything like the back of my iPod Touch, it probably looks like it’s spent a few hours in a rock tumbler on a low stuffed with diamonds… but if a new Apple patent application pans out, Cupertino may already have some plans to unleash new scratch-resistant coatings on their gadgets in the near future.
How does Apple intend on making their products scratch free? Easy: they want to use cheap nitride coatings just fifteen microns thick on top of stainless steel enclosures. This nitride layer would, according to the patent application, “allow for the natural surface color and texture of the underlying stainless steel to remain visible to the user” while also making it markedly more scratch resistant and durable.
It’s a cheap solution for Apple to employ, and would allow Apple to roll out stainless steel as a design material across their gadgets more liberally, without worrying about that material’s tendency to pick up scratches. A scratch-resistant iPod? This sounds like the innovation I’ve been waiting for Apple to make for the last decade.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
