
Apple patents MacBook with key switches under a flexible touchscreen keyboard - gjvc
https://www.techspot.com/news/78549-apple-patents-macbook-key-switches-underneath-flexible-touchscreen.html
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highace
Is this punishment for all the complaints about the current keyboard?

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on_and_off
Apple just wants us to get used to a shitty key feel to open the door to even
worse.

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dgzl
You're not entirely wrong here.

Companies have no obligation to give the consumer the biggest and best, if
they know the consumer will be satisfied with par. For instance, if a business
has no/weak competition, then even if the company has a next-level product
ready for distribution, it would make more sense to keep the lesser product on
the shelf and only increment features when competition arrives.

For Apple, they know their customers are loyal and getting them riled up about
some things here and there will only heighten the excitement when the truly
epic product is released. I'm not sure if that's what's happening here, but I
don't see Apple struggling.

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on_and_off
I was half joking.

In my personal case I have grown more and more frustrated with Apple's
products.

It boggles my mind that my 5 years old MBP is more pleasant to use than the
one I got at work 1 year ago

(to be 100% fair, the new model has one nicety : the fingerprint reader, even
though I am not 100% satisfied/convinced, it is nicer than entering a
password).

I am more than ready to jump ship to any other product at this point. Even an
OS that I feel is inferior for my personal needs won't be too much of an issue
if it does everything else better than my current laptop.

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m0zg
The strategy reveals itself: make a keyboard so shitty that a single breadcumb
kills it. Then "upgrade" the users to something they wouldn't want if they had
a proper, "old macbook pro" style keyboard.

Reminds me of an old Soviet joke. A guy comes to his doctor and starts
complaining: "Doctor, it's intolerable, 10 of us live in tiny room in a
communal apartment, I can't live like that anymore." The doctor suggests: "Get
a pet goat and come back for a checkup in a month." So the guy comes back in a
month, totally livid: "It's even worse, the goat takes up a lot of space,
shits everywhere and starts baa-hing at 4AM in the morning. Everyone is
suicidal." The wise doctor: "Now get rid of the goat".

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crsmithdev
Perhaps eventually they'll invent and patent their way back to a usable laptop
keyboard :)

IMO, declaring bankruptcy on the current design and reverting to the previous
chiclet keys would be welcomed by most users, but it seems unlikely that Apple
will actually admit a mistake for a few more years (e.g. what happened with
the Mac Pro).

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throwaway98121
The 2015 MacBook Pro was the last piece of great hardware from Apple, in terms
of their laptops. The newer MacBooks with their gimmicky touchbar and useless
keyboards, for the sake of being thin, just show Tim Cook and his advisors
have no ideas other than taking advantage of Facebooks privacy disasters and
trying to get consumers to keep buying Apple products because Apple is
supposedly on a higher moral pedestal.

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lilactown
2015 MBP was great, but I also immensely enjoyed my 2013 MacBook Air. The
Air's battery life, form factor and performance made it hands down the best
laptop for its time.

I'm actually in the process of wiping it to give to a friend and feeling a bit
of sadness. I use a 2017 MBP now - the screen is what finally got me - but
you're right, todays hardware just doesn't compare to how it felt back then.

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simple_phrases
The Macbook Air form factor was, in my opinion, ideal. I have a 2011 MBA I
keep around the house because it's still great.

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wanderfowl
Hm. At some level, this would be great, particularly for fluidly switching
among keyboards across many languages, or even for particular games or
applications (remapping the keys to functions which are nicely labeled). But
it would need to get the haptic cues right, such that touch-typing remains
possible and enjoyable.

One side bonus is that presumably, your keyboard would now be covered in a
continuous non-permeable sheet. Combined with haptic touchpads, we're edging
closer and closer to a more water-resistant laptop.

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Eric_WVGG
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment: the faux button on the
trackpad is absolutely magical, superior in every way to a physical button.

So imagine that the "glass" of the new keyboard had physical ridges for the
gutters between the keys, and then adjustable sensitivity for the force
"clicks"… I could get into this. The lack of moving parts would provvide
greater long-time durability, and make water damage a distant memory.

btw, see that double-vv above? Guess who's keyboard is failing for a second
time? Yes, I, like many others, wouldn't mind a return to the older keyboard,
but I'm also not afraid of the future. If that trackpad button is possible, I
am confident that we'll see a faux keyboard of this quality at some point in
my lifetime.

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throwaway98121
I don’t see how a glass screen, no matter how amazing it feels, would be
better than a keyboard. Of course, any judgement I pass is far too premature
and a tad unfair since it’s just a patent and I haven’t tried out the product
that uses the patent.

I do think that Apple is seemingly out of ideas. I’d be happy to buy a MacBook
if they fixed the problems since 2016.

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coldtea
> _I don’t see how a glass screen, no matter how amazing it feels, would be
> better than a keyboard._

2007 called, it wants its arguments back -- for those were the same arguments
made in favor of Blackberry and other crappy experiences compared to today's
touch smartphones.

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frosted-flakes
Except modern BlackBerrys provide a far more enjoyable and accurate experience
than typing on glass. It's not necessarily _faster_ , but nicer. And you even
get gesture support for stuff like adding suggestions and moving the cursors
around. Modern BlackBerrys run Android.

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coldtea
And all 10 people prefer that "more enjoyable experience", so it makes one
wonder, more enjoyable to whom?

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frosted-flakes
I've never understood this attitude toward BlackBerry. Not that I really care,
but you'd think more people would rather have more choice, than less.

It's true that BlackBerry the company was unsuccessful at selling phones since
its heyday many years ago, but they're not in that business anymore, and
haven't been for years. These days, they license the BlackBerry brand and
patents to companies like TCL, who've been relatively successful with phones
like the KeyOne and Key2. Just because BlackBerrys (BlackBerries?) form an
almost insignificant share of Android devices doesn't mean they're not good.

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aaaaaaaaaaab
Suddenly the current MBP keyboard doesn't seem that bad.

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in_hindsight
Beautiful damage control on Apple’s part, now people will stop posting their
complaints on the forums

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shrimpx
This will be awesome for vim-ers. Imagine the keyboard symbols change to
display the actions you can do in command mode. When you press "d" in command
mode, the relevant keys light up to indicate the type of object you can
delete.

Also in emacs, you hit ctrl-x and then the keyboard lights up to indicate any
following actions you can take. It can have small text annotations with the
actions, too.

Extrapolate further to power tools like Apple Logic, or Final Cut Pro, where
the keyboard becomes labeled with sound and film editing actions. The keyboard
can go levels deep, where you enter one mode and the keyboard reconfigures
itself with actions in that mode. Not just with key symbols, but
colored/delineated control areas with arbitrary graphical and animation
capability.

This would basically finally take the keyboard to the next level; it has been
roughly the same since the 60s. It widens the range of sensible input you can
do with a keyboard by making it super intuitive to switch beteen and use
arbitrary control modes.

The power is undeniable, but the true test is feel.

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diffeomorphism
For emacs this is already done by which-key, which tells you about all
following actions and their description.

Also, this seems only useful if you don't touch type, which seems like the
opposite demographic of emacs and vim users.

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shrimpx
First, yes emacs has this functionality. But a visual keyboard interface would
make it super intuitive and direct.

Second, I disagree with the touch typing argument. Touch typing is a learned
skill on an interface like the qwerty or the dvorak button layout, and has its
roots in typewriting.

There are innumerable other button layouts you could "touch type" on. On a
visual keyboard of course you can still touch type in the classic style in the
qwerty layout. But then there are many other possible layouts allowing varying
types of control, not just a layout for typing letters and numbers.

Also when you really think about it, it's pretty arbitrary that control
commands in pro software and games involve letters and numbers. It's an
awkward consequence of the ingrained limited keyboard layout. You should be
pressing the "fire!" button not the key for typing the letter "f" (if indeed
letter "f" is not occupied by some other command whose name starts with "f").

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diffeomorphism
> You should be pressing the "fire!" button not the key for typing the letter
> "f"

Sure, keyboard layouts are arbitrary, as are keycaps (you can also buy blank
keycaps if you like). There are some fun interfaces you can make if you have
the flexibility as can be seen in games for the Nintendo DS or switch or some
tablet apps that can be used with external screens or people using multiple
keyboards, music controllers etc.. However, just like with gamepads, joysticks
etc. they are controls for something else. So once the controls feel natural
you stop looking at your fingers and instead look at what you are controlling.
I would argue that playing a game with a gamepad or joystick or touch typing
or playing an instrument are all very similar. So just like putting stickers
on the fretboard of a guitar this might make things "intuitive" at first, but
is rather the opposite of direct and not something you keep using.

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bastawhiz
Reminds me a lot of the ill-fated optimus keyboard.

[https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/](https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/)

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mratzloff
Hopefully it doesn't cost $1000 like that did.

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xixixao
"it’s more of a way to enhance interaction by creating dynamic buttons that
are application dependent." But this is fundamentally touch-typist unfriendly.
And most serious professionals, most people who actually try to maximize their
productivity, will be at some level of touch typing - not having to look at
the keyboard while they type. So this makes much more sense for non-
professional use cases - where the iPad might already be a winner anyway.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was just a defensive patent that never makes
it into a product.

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dreamcompiler
They might be assuming that most computer users nowadays never learned to
touch type. Maybe they're right. Anybody know the current statistics on this?

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dgzl
I would bet you're right. As soon as an option was presented for using
computer functions away from the PC (i.e. smartphones), people ditched the
keyboard and desk.

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Moto7451
There's a lot of lamenting about this keyboard concept, but to play devils
advocate, it could also be presented as the entire keyboard for the patent but
actually be meant for the Touch Bar. That way they can give the F keys some
tactile feedback. The escape and F "keys" lack of feedback does not inspire
confidence when typing. Having some force feedback at the very least would be
an improvement. Having an actual key press would be great.

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kkylin
I've been hoping for something like this for some time (and have thought Apple
might be moving in that direction with the Touch Bar etc). It may just be the
way I type, and I may well be in a minority, but I'd much prefer a
configuration with the keyboard closer to me and the trackpad elsewhere, since
I actually don't use the trackpad as much as the keyboard. It'd be nice to be
able to reconfigure the input surface on the fly.

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jwr
I found that the ipad pro keyboard is surprisingly ergonomic, exactly because
of this.

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liquidise
This should come as no surprise. Apple has been on a crusade against buttons
for years. Trackpads are now haptic, the iphones have cast aside the home
button years ago.

Ive, and Apple by extension, view buttons as the waste of screen space.
Replacing the bottom laptop panel with a touchscreen does present some
interesting usability options. It also worries me that we are moving ever
closer to OS X being replaced with some version of iOS instead of the other
way around.

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jdietrich
This sounds an awful lot like the notoriously awful membrane keyboard on the
Sinclair ZX81.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81#/media/File:Sinclair-
ZX81...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81#/media/File:Sinclair-ZX81.png)

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ckrraa
So the current MacBook is going to seem like a good deal over at the Apple
office, where most developers dread to have one of the new ones assigned to
them and hope for an older one without the touchpad.

Did you ever try to use Idea or IntelliJ with the new one? Fuck those function
keys! ..

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danso
What is the latest MacBook to not have a touchpad?

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mmgutz
I think he meant Touch Bar

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purplezooey
Is it just me or does it look like the top touchscreen layer would wear out
fast, constantly being "inverted"/bent for every keystroke.

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cs02rm0
Yet another way to increase failure rates and repair costs, just what the MBP
needs.

To be fair, I'd think it more likely Apple would just remove the keyboard and
sell you a dongle to plug an external one in than this. Although right now I
wouldn't put it past them.

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nimish
That's what they sell iPad for

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romanr
This opens up possibility for keyboard that acts as touchpad if you press and
slide finger. Like on the iPhone. And that, by removing touchpad opens
possibility of smaller MacBook.

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agumonkey
Few years ago they patented some tactile LCD matrix

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tomcam
I look forward to Apple releasing a small, light laptop with a keyboard as
reliable as my 2011 MacBook Air.

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amiga-workbench
I'd rather daily driver a ZX80.

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exabrial
I bet they also get rid of all the ports, including the charger.

