|
With Apple’s acquisition of Beats this year, headphones have suddenly become a focal point for the consumer technology industry. If you look closely, though, you’ll realize that they’ve always been there. 随着苹果公司（Apple）斥巨资收购Beats公司，耳机一夜之间成了消费电子科技行业的焦点。其实如果你了解得更深入一些，你会发现耳机从来没有走远。 We take headphones for granted. We forget they’re jammed in our ears or hanging around our neck. They were “wearable” back when the term meant the shirt at the top of the laundry pile. They have been feeding us data from our smartphones since smartphones existed. Yet they have remained at the margins of the wearable tech rush. Until Apple’s $3 billion buy, that is. 我们一直把耳机的存在当成天经地义的事情，甚至忘了我们正把它塞在耳朵里或挂在脖子上。早在“可穿戴”这个词指的是晾衣杆上挂着的衬衣的时候，耳机就已经是真真正正的“可穿戴”之物。自从智能手机发明以来，它就忠实地把智能手机里的信息传递给我们。尽管如此，耳机一直处于可穿戴科技浪潮的边缘地带，直到苹果公司以30亿美元的高价收购了Beats，这种现象才得以改观。 Apple AAPL -0.61% , as the company is wont to do, has said little about whether its acquisition was driven by talent (namely co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre), technology, or something else entirely. All CEO Tim Cook seems to talk about is how much he loves music. Yet in interviews with Fortune, leaders in headphone design and biometric research say that headphones have the ability to be much more than mere private audio listening devices. | 
