Apple MacBooks could see major innovative changes in the near future, including a built-in iPhone charger, a dynamic resizable touchpad, and indeed a gesture-sensing keyboard (and more). These potential design elements were revealed with the kind permission of Patently Apple, which spotted some successfully filed patents from the MacBook maker. The first patent concerns a "dynamic input surface" to replace the traditional trackpad. As it is, the MacBook trackpad sits below the keyboard in the middle of the chassis, but the new idea would be to make the entire area below the keyboard an illuminated trackpad, which the user can easily adjust to be smaller or larger (even across the entire width of the chassis, if desired). Some form of haptic feedback would also be included, and simple finger gestures could be used to adjust the size of the illuminated trackpad, according to accompanying illustrations to the patent. The larger idea, apparently, is to familiarize MacBook owners with this customizable trackpad concept, before replacing the keyboard entirely with a similar glossy model. This idea has already taken off, as we saw a few years ago with an Apple patent that described a virtual keyboard that used light symbols that could light up to create a QWERTY pattern, or be reconfigured according to whatever input diagram you might need. Look at this dynamically adjustable illuminated space, we guess...
Good finger tracking
In short, it seems more and more likely that there will be major design changes for the MacBook, and there are also rumors that one of them could be the move to an ARM processor instead of Intel chips, what if? Still with this in mind, the second Apple patent that has been granted describes a keyboard having a transparent finger detection system superimposed on the keys. This would allow the user to draw directly on the keyboard with their finger, allowing them to draw lines or boxes in a document, for example, or facilitate pinch and zoom gestures.
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(Image credit: Patented Apple/Apple) Another idea is to implement a phone charger directly into the MacBook chassis, to the left of the trackpad (in the palm rest area), in which you can place your iPhone and charge it wirelessly. This could be a pretty nice touch for those who invest in their Apple devices. Other potential proprietary exploration routes here include not only integrating this iPhone charger into the MacBook's palm rest area, but also biometric sensors. These could provide physical security measures such as palm detection (or wrist detection) to verify the user, and possibly also take measurements such as heart rate or temperature. And given the current coronavirus pandemic, it's easy to see how your MacBook with a built-in thermometer to warn you if your temperature is high could be a useful early warning system, so you can go and get it checked out properly. . There are a lot of ideas here, then, and while Apple files a lot of patents, this set of ideas for keyboard and trackpad functionality adds to a growing number of these concepts, which shows quite a bit. Clearly, the MacBook maker has big plans for its portable input devices. We've already seen the company's patent concepts for more reliable optical switches for keyboards, and ideas for virtual keyboards for Apple laptops have been pitched since 2011 (including a dual-screen device with a second screen that can be used as a virtual OLED keyboard).