A quick survey of BGR readers last month showed that many people aren’t very happy about having to pay Apple (AAPL) $29 for an adapter that will allow their iPhone 5 to work with accessories featuring the older 30-pin dock port. But AppleInsider reports that Apple may be working on a more palatable solution to the adapter problem, as the company was granted “a patent covering a universal adapter for portable media players that affords, in one embodiment, the transmission of wireless data to any accessory.”
Or put another way, Apple seems to be developing a technology that will let users shoot data from their iPhones to the accessories wirelessly without the aid of a clunky-looking port adapter. AppleInsider says that the new patent is an extension of technology Apple has had in the works since 2008 but adds that while “the original invention was meant to skirt purchasing speakers or docks for each portable device a user owned… the patent can now be adapted to solve the current issue of having rendered-obsolete accessories.”