Apple Explores Using An iPhone, iPad To Power a Laptop (appleinsider.com)

According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple has filed a patent for an "Electronic accessory device." It describes a "thin" accessory that contains traditional laptop hardware like a large display, physical keyboard, GPU, ports and more -- all of which is powered by an iPhone or iPad. The device powering the hardware would fit into a slot built into the accessory. AppleInsider reports: While the accessory can take many forms, the document for the most part remains limited in scope to housings that mimic laptop form factors. In some embodiments, for example, the accessory includes a port shaped to accommodate a host iPhone or iPad. Located in the base portion, this slot might also incorporate a communications interface and a means of power transfer, perhaps Lightning or a Smart Connector. Alternatively, a host device might transfer data and commands to the accessory via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or other wireless protocol. Onboard memory modules would further extend an iOS device's capabilities. Though the document fails to delve into details, accessory memory would presumably allow an iPhone or iPad to write and read app data. In other cases, a secondary operating system or firmware might be installed to imitate a laptop environment or store laptop-ready versions of iOS apps. In addition to crunching numbers, a host device might also double as a touch input. For example, an iPhone positioned below the accessory's keyboard can serve as the unit's multitouch touchpad, complete with Force Touch input and haptic feedback. Coincidentally, the surface area of a 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus is very similar to that of the enlarged trackpad on Apple's new MacBook Pro models. Some embodiments also allow for the accessory to carry an internal GPU, helping a host device power the larger display or facilitate graphics rendering not possible on iPhone or iPad alone. Since the accessory is technically powered by iOS, its built-in display is touch-capable, an oft-requested feature for Mac. Alternatively, certain embodiments have an iPad serving as the accessory's screen, with keyboard, memory, GPU and other operating guts located in the attached base portion. This latter design resembles a beefed up version of Apple's Smart Case for iPad.

Comments

So they just reinvented the docking station?

[aXis100]

So much prior art it's not funny. I've seen articles for years discussing using smartphones as PC replacements using some kind of dock.

Even the existing transformer tables are also quite close, with the exception that they use the tablet's display.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[alzoron]

But none of that prior art was an Apple product. Everything Apple makes is innovative and new therefore worthy of a patent.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[Anonymous Coward]

aha but it's a docking station "on the internet"

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[BronsCon]

Prior art, indeed! My Motorola Atrix did this in 2011. I still have the Lapdock and use it with a RasPi; it provides power, keyboard, trackpad, 1080p display, and a pair of USB ports.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[simpli]

Crap, I thought of this 5-7 years ago, talked about it while drinking many times. And yes, specifically involving Apple hardware. Slot in the car dash to insert the phone/pad. They added ApplePlay which does some of the same. But other idea was latptop shell that could give extra battery and maybe processing power. But even then it was so obvious I didn't pursue. I'm sure they will get a slam dunk approval even though it was so obvious.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[Bert64]

The Motorola Atrix did something similar...
We've even had discussions on this very site about building devices almost identical to what apple proposes...
And yet they will probably be granted this patent anyway.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[BasilBrush]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of patents. All patents have prior art. Indeed they list the prior art in the patent. Patents take something that is already patented, and add some new things. Patents are never for something that is entirely new, the always build on what came before.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[SoftwareArtist]

Here is claim 1 from Apple's patent application.

1. An electronic accessory device, comprising: an operational component that provides an output to a user; a housing carrying the operational component, the housing having a recess; and a control interface coupled to the operational component and configured to receive a control signal from an electronic host device when the electronic host device is positioned within the recess and coupled to the control interface, wherein the electronic accessory device is inoperable without the electronic host device being coupled to the control interface.

Can you point out to me what are the "new things" in that? I'd say the Motorola Atrix fit every last piece of that. But Apple is claiming it as novel and asking for patent protection on it.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[BasilBrush]

I didn't say every claim contained something new. But the patent does. 2 examples:

"4. The electronic accessory device as recited in claim 3, wherein the operational component comprises an accessory display configured to present visual content. "

"5. The electronic accessory device as recited in claim 4, wherein the electronic host device comprises an input device configured to detect a touch event. "

Neither of these are present in the Atrix Lapdock, as it places the phone behind the laptop screen. The Apple patent has the phone placed where a touchscreen would be in a laptop, and that's what make these two claims possible.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[SoftwareArtist]

That isn't how patents work. Every claim is independently asserted to be a novel invention. If someone violates even one claim, they're violating the patent.

By the way, "an accessory display configured to present visual content" is also known as an external monitor. An "input device configured to detect a touch event" is also known as a trackpad. The Atrix dock had both. So have countless other docking stations for various computers over the years.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[BronsCon]

"4. The electronic accessory device as recited in claim 3, wherein the operational component comprises an accessory display configured to present visual content. "

I'll refer you to claim 1:

1. An electronic accessory device, comprising: an operational component that provides an output to a user; a housing carrying the operational component, the housing having a recess; and a control interface coupled to the operational component and configured to receive a control signal from an electronic host device when the electronic host device is positioned within the recess and coupled to the control interface, wherein the electronic accessory device is inoperable without the electronic host device being coupled to the control interface.

The "operational component" is the dock/display, not the phone; the phone is, later, referred to as the "electronic host device". There is nothing novel in #1, as it's describing precisely what the Motorola Atrix and Lapdock did; there's also nothing novel in #4, it's simply describing an external display as part of a dock which, again is what the Atrix and Lapdock did.

"5. The electronic accessory device as recited in claim 4, wherein the electronic host device comprises an input device configured to detect a touch event. "

Indeed, and the Atrix did still respond to touch when docked. I distinctly recall wondering why, as you had to have the Lapdock display tilted at an odd angle, wherein it could still be actively in use as a display but tilted too far forward to really be useful, to be able to do so. It may not have been configured to detect a touch event in a useful way, but it was configured to detect a touch event while docked, which is the claim made here. There's, likewise, nothing novel in #5.

Claims 22-26 are not covered by the Atrix/Lapdock, but the other 15 claims are invalidated by that prior art. The remaining 5 claims are also not novel, having existed within previous mobile device dock designs; hell, I'm sure at least one of them included all 20 claims. Yes, the claims are numbered 1-28; 9-16 were "cancelled", so there are, truly, only 20 claims remaining, 3/4 of which are covered by a single piece of prior art from 7 years ago.

As SoftwareArtist pointed out, above me:

Every claim is independently asserted to be a novel invention.

None of these claims represent anything novel, even within the scope of mobile device docking stations.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[BasilBrush]

I'm not going to argue your interpretation of individual phrases. This patent is for a phone placed where a touchscreen would be in a laptop, so that it can be used for both touch and display.

The Atrix Lapdock had the phone vertically behind the laptop screen where it could not be used for touch or a secondary display.

Completely different.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[BasilBrush]

The Atrix Lapdock didn't use the phone for either touch or display.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[BronsCon]

Maybe read the entirety of my post?

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[BasilBrush]

I did. It's shit.

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[BronsCon]

You, sir, have absolutely mastered the art of debate.

I thought we were debating the validity of this patent; were we not? What, exactly, do you think goes on in court, when the validity of a patent is being tried? More or less, they're arguing over the interpretation of individual phrases.

If you don't want to do that, you must not have a very strong belief in the validity of this patent. You, quite simply, have no argument, so you turn to personal attacks, as always.

Unlike you, I actually read the patent, in its entirety and understood it. As a result, I was able to point out claims which, with respect to the Atrix and Lapdock, are novel; there are 5 of them, a list which does not include the two you chose to discuss. However, while none of the claims appear in the Atrix/Lapdock, they do all appear in similar products. None of them are novel.

Backing up to your previous post for a moment...

This patent is for a phone placed where a touchscreen would be in a laptop, so that it can be used for both touch and display.

The bit about touch being used to control the accessory is claim 24; claim 5 merely mentions that the host device (that is, the phone) has touch capabilities. The bit about the phone being used as a display is claim 7, wherein the host device (phone) displays host (phone) content. That claim says nothing of where the phone is positioned, nor that the phone's screen must be visible at all times during use; it only stipulates that the phoen display shows, well, phone stuff. Which the Atrix continued to do while placed in the dock. Claim 4, which you cited, only mentions a screen on the dock itself. The patent, likewise, says nothing about where the device should be docked, but more on that later.

I get what you're arguing, based off the bit I quoted here, but neither claim you referenced supports that argument; and neither are novel.

Hell, one of their drawings (fig 4) is of a freakin' iPad keyboard case, which they're also claiming is novel because it has a trackpad (not the iPhone, but an actual trackpad in the case) which, well... I guess would be novel for an iPad, but that very configuration has existed in the Android world for some time. Here is just one example, you can google "Android keyboard trackpad case", without quotes, for more. Yes, the iPhone dock drawings show the phone docked in the trackpad location; however, that is not a claim in the patent, it is merely one representation of the claims as a whole. Remember how I said I'd get back to that? Here we are:

Were there a claim as to the host device docking location, or were it stipulated anywhere else in the patent, the iPad drawing could not have been included, as it does not fit that stipulation.

Of course, such positioning is obvious for the iPhone; and changing positions is obvious for the iPad (and with just shy of 7 years and thousands of examples of prior art, it should be clear just how obvious). As such, if it were detailed in the patent, the patent would likely be invalidated by that inclusion. Of course, that's not to say that the patent is valid in the first place.

From the detailed description:

[0019] In one embodiment, the accessory device can have a form factor of a laptop computer having a display and a keyboard as well as other output/input devices known to be available with a laptop computer. The accessory device, however, does not have the processing resources (such as a CPU) generally associated with a conventional laptop computer. In this regard, the host device can provide the necessary computing resources, but it is the accessory device that provides additional functionality, such as a large display, enhanced audio capabilities, and further input means. These can include, for example, a mouse, track pad, keyboard, and the like.

That's the Atr

Re:So they just reinvented the docking station?

[Plumpaquatsch]

That isn't how patents work. Every claim is independently asserted to be a novel invention. If someone violates even one claim, they're violating the patent.

Thanks for exactly explaining how a a patent doesn't work. I bet you are just as artistic with software.

Duo Dock?

[MacTO]

My first thought was that this is the Duo Dock for the smart phone generation: taking a smaller portable form factor and converting it into a more traditional form factor (phone/tablet -> laptop vs. laptop -> desktop). I don't know if Apple was the first at docking stations, but they were certainly doing it a quarter century ago.

Sounds a lot like USB-Câ power delivery

[Hadlock]

My eyes kind of glazed over reading the description but none of this sounded like anything you can't already do with USB-C power delivery mode. You can already run a 1080p display off of your cell phone, both power and data on the same cable. If you hook it up to a capable hub you can plug in your mouse and keyboard too

Re:Sounds a lot like USB-Câ power delivery

[thegarbz]

My eyes kind of glazed over reading the description but none of this sounded like anything you can't already do with USB-C power delivery mode.

The key here is that it's not the host providing the power delivery. I haven't been keeping up with the latest USB spec but this direction of power flow sounds like it would have been in breach of earlier USB specs for everything except USB-OTG which turning a device into a host necessitates the reverse of the normal power flow.

Re:Sounds a lot like USB-Câ power delivery

[cdrudge]

I haven't been keeping up with the latest USB spec but this direction of power flow sounds like it would have been in breach of earlier USB specs for everything except USB-OTG which turning a device into a host necessitates the reverse of the normal power flow.

I believe USB-C and USB Power Delivery (USB PD) specs had this specifically in mind. They changed the fixed concept of one device being the host/master and one being the guest/slave in lieu of the devices being able to negotiate roles as needed.

Re:Sounds a lot like USB-Câ power delivery

[thegarbz]

If that is true that is awesome. I have some reading to do.

Re:Sounds a lot like USB-Câ power delivery

[tlhIngan]

I haven't been keeping up with the latest USB spec but this direction of power flow sounds like it would have been in breach of earlier USB specs for everything except USB-OTG which turning a device into a host necessitates the reverse of the normal power flow.

I believe USB-C and USB Power Delivery (USB PD) specs had this specifically in mind. They changed the fixed concept of one device being the host/master and one being the guest/slave in lieu of the devices being able to negotiate roles as needed.

In "classic' USB, you had two roles - a host, and a slave (or device). Power flows from the host to the slave, regulated and monitored so the slave does not draw too much power. The host also interrogates the slave to figure out what kind of device it is and all that other good stuff.

With USB-C and USB-PD, the roles are more flexible. First, the direction of power flow is no longer obvious. Something like a monitor may dock a laptop over USB-C, so the monitor is the device (and thunderbolt target too) but power is flowing from the monitor to the laptop to charge it. In classic USB, this can't happen - the laptop is forced to power the screen instead.

In USB-OTG, no power flows at all, though the present host will supply up to 100mA at 5V in case there's any circuits needing powering. If the roles switch, then the old host switches off its power and the new host turns on its power.lh

Motorola Atrix Lapdock

[Anonymous Coward]

"Quite close" seems like an understatement when I remember this http://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Motorola-ATRIX-4G-Laptop-Dock-Review_id2667 from 20011/12.

Already done by BlackBerry

[Baron_Yam]

...and probably everyone else.

What else do you call it when you can connect your phone to an external keyboard, monitor, and control devices? The phone did most things by Bluetooth but video (and audio optionally) over HDMI. It would also connect to Samba shares for file access.

Now, if I can put my phone down on the opened 'laptop' and it's smart enough to act as a trackpad for the external device while drawing power from it and sending video and audio to it, that'd be nice.

I don't really need massively upgraded processing power or video - my phone itself is already good enough for most purposes, and if the external device has all those upgrades, I'd probably use it instead of the phone and not bother with the whole 'docking' part.

Totally abandoning their core userbase

[Solandri]

There are two primary reasons graphics professionals love Macs.

• Support for color profiles. Profiles are important not just for accurate screen colors, but for previewing how something will look when printed. Like newspaper and magazine editors need to do. Like poster and billboard advertisers need to do. Like packaging artists need to do. Windows' support for color profiles is half-hearted. It still dumps your loaded color profile if the damn UAC elevation prompt pops up (their method of darkening the screen outside the dialog seems to do it). It's done this since Win 7 and Microsoft still hasn't bothered fixing it. The companies which make color profiling equipment have had to make software work-arounds for it. On the Macs it just works.
• Resolution-agnostic fonts. This has been a part of Macs since their inception, and Apple developed Postscript based on the same concept. When you plug a monitor into a Mac, the Mac queries it for its model and dimensions. Then based on the screen size and resolution, it automatically scales fonts so that e.g. a 11 point font is the correct size. This is why layout artists love the Macs - what they see on the screen is exactly what it'll look like when printed, not just in terms of layout but also size. Postscript does the same thing except for fonts on printers. Windows doesn't even try to do this. You get that silly 100%-200% scaling option, where 100% is based entirely on resolution without any regard for screen size. This is why OS X had no problems switching to high-PPI "Retina" screens, while Windows still has problems with it. On the Macs it just works.

1) iOS doesn't support color profiles. While Apple does calibrate the screens, there's no way for users to add their own color profile. No way to add a printer profile. No way to switch to AdobeRGB if/when the iOS devices get OLED screens and you want to edit the full color information captured by your DSLR.

2) iOS relies on a fixed resolution. That's why when they increased resolution on the iPhone and iPad, they had to do it by doubling the resolution. It was the only way to insure that apps written with the old resolution would still display properly. Basically they have the same problem with old apps on high-PPI screens as Windows does. (Ironically, Android does support arbitrary scaling based on PPI. So Android is more more like MacOS and OS X in this respect than iOS is.)

An iOS-based laptop may suit the needs of the casual user (browser, facebook, office apps). But it's totally unsuitable for graphics/photo/video professionals.

Re:Totally abandoning their core userbase

[0100010001010011]

They're putting short term profits ahead of the long game. Long before the iPhone came out OS X came bundled with XCode. Anyone wanting to learn to code for the Mac could do it out of the box starting with 10.3. For a college student that wasn't quite ready to get started in Linux (And this was Linux 2003 mind you) it was amazing that I could compile stuff out of the box without dealing with cygwin on Windows XP.

If you coded in XCode the PPC-64, x86 and x86-64 migrations were relatively painless. When the iPhone finally got a dev kit the tools had been out for 5+ years. People were able to hop in to iPhone development. Distributed builds over ZeroConf have been supported for a while as well. Have a dozen machines sitting idle? Hit compile and distribute the load.

Apple has fallen completely on their face supporting the people that make the pretty widget iPhone apps. Unless they start churning out development tools there isn't going to be a machine to do iOS n+2 development on.

Re:Totally abandoning their core userbase

[R3d M3rcury]

A few comments...

Resolution-agnostic fonts. This has been a part of Macs since their inception [...]

Mac's "inception" was 1984 and, no, fonts were not resolution-agnostic.

Apple developed Postscript based on the same concept.

Adobe developed Postscript and worked with NeXT to develop Display Postscript. Apple had their own technology for fonts as part QuickDraw GX, which went nowhere.

 

iOS relies on a fixed resolution.

I'll admit, I'm not up on the latest for iOS. But last I looked, iOS now has support for variable resolution. But you're right that it didn't initially.

Re:Totally abandoning their core userbase

[gl4ss]

you think iveyyy understood anything about that? hell no.

if he did, then ios would have had arbitrary dpi support for a long time.

and btw windows itself has supported arbitrary dpi for a long, long, long time now. some asian manufacturer volume control apps and such are just the stuff that broke.

also ios fixed resolutions were a cancer on mobile app design for a long time and now theres on the market thousands of app designers who can only draw a photoshop picture for a fixed size screen and can't comprehend the question "what if the screen is 1.5x times wide" or what "if the screen is 4cm across and not 10cm".

Re:Totally abandoning their core userbase

[Anonymous Coward]

You have xCode available for free in the App Store. What's more important: now you can run your own apps in your iOS devices without an Apple Developer account so the situation is better in this aspect than before.

Re:Totally abandoning their core userbase

[Pieroxy]

iOS relies on a fixed resolution. That's why when they increased resolution on the iPhone and iPad, they had to do it by doubling the resolution. It was the only way to insure that apps written with the old resolution would still display properly. Basically they have the same problem with old apps on high-PPI screens as Windows does. (Ironically, Android does support arbitrary scaling based on PPI. So Android is more more like MacOS and OS X in this respect than iOS is.)

iOS supports at least 6 different resolutions: iPhone 4, iPhone SE, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 plus and Ipads. What are you talking about ?

An iOS-based laptop may suit the needs of the casual user (browser, facebook, office apps). But it's totally unsuitable for graphics/photo/video professionals.

I doubt it would be the point.

Re:Totally abandoning their core userbase

[thegarbz]

There isn't much of an appreciable difference between Windows and OSX when it comes to colour profiling anymore. The OS provides the information to the software, and the software handles it. Soft-proofing has always been the domain of the software package itself and not the OS. In that regard OSX and Windows are very much equal and have been since the XP days.

It still dumps your loaded color profile if the damn UAC elevation prompt pops up (their method of darkening the screen outside the dialog seems to do it). It's done this since Win 7 and Microsoft still hasn't bothered fixing it. The companies which make color profiling equipment have had to make software work-arounds for it.

Two things here: a) If you're getting a UAC prompt doing normal day to day work there is something wrong. And by extension the "work around" is for vendors to write proper software. You don't need UAC elevation to read or set a colour profile.

I do agree screen scaling on Windows is garbage. Literally it looks like something you would print and then throw away because you used an incorrect setting somewhere.

Now to be fair to Apple here:

1) iOS doesn't support color profiles.

I would imagine that any toy with a fixed screen would not have colour profile support anywhere in its list of design requirements. The profile doesn't change so there's no reason not to bake it into the OS. Trying to do something less toy like with a toy e.g. attaching an external monitor doesn't make it any less so.

2) iOS relies on a fixed resolution.

See above. If you control the screen size there's no reason to support something else.

An iOS-based laptop

Should be cast back to hell where it belongs :-)

Re:Totally abandoning their core userbase

[Bert64]

X11 reads the monitor DPI too, and also scales fonts, as did SGI IRIX back in the day...

Windows as you rightly point out, doesn't bother, and because of this a lot of monitors don't actually supply the required information.

People now seem to think that the point measurement used for fonts relates to pixels on screen rather than any physical size, and it's a commonly held belief that a larger monitor just makes everything bigger rather than providing more space.

Conversion therapy

[PCeye]

Can't wait to see the cluster fuck of dongles Apple will require for this union of parts.

a laptop with no user file system and sandboxed ap

[Joe_Dragon]

a laptop with no user file system and only runs sandboxes apps is useless.

Re: You mean like my 6 year old Atrix

[gl4ss]

yeah because thats not that big of an addition.

it's not worth giving a patent for, frankly.

especially when you could have used your touchscreen phone as a trackpad(without a dock) for a laptop since.. well fucking since 2001 or so.

maybe they're patenting using lighting connector.. but thats another thing, you shouldnt be able to patent the same fucking thing with using a different connector.

Re: They don't fit

[DontBeAMoran]

Oh, come on. The battery life on the iPhone isn't that bad.

Sent from my iPh

Re:You mean like my 6 year old Atrix

[lucm]

before libreoffice was cool

This is 2017 and we are still "before libreoffice was cool"

Sorry Apple...

[XSportSeeker]

...but the Asus PadPhone is a 5 years old product by now. No need to patent it, just pay for royalties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Also, isn't it kinda weird how Apple is adamantly against a touchscreen MacBook, yet they go and patent something like this?

Re:Sorry Apple...

[MikeMo]

They are not against touch screens, obviously, and they've been selling iPads with keyboards for some time. What they're against is trying make the existing Mac world (programs and OS) touch aware.

Two points of bullshit

[SuperKendall]

iOS doesn't support color profiles.

Maybe you should read more before you type.

Just because they don't provide you a way to assign a color profile does not mean iOS does not support color profiles... They have to because different devices now support a number of different gamuts.

iOS relies on a fixed resolution.

No, no it does not. It does specify things in points, but at this point there are a lot of iOS devices that are not just double the resolution of the original iPhone...

iOS supports all kinds of technologies that render at whatever resolution you have. From various Core Graphics drawing primitives to advanced image scaling stuff that makes full use of the GPU. I can take a PDF and drop it into Xcode to use as an asset anywhere in the app.

It also of course uses autolayout quite heavily in development, which will happily adapt UI elements to any kind of resolution differences it may encounter.

Lapdock 100 did that in 2011

[kbdd]

My Moto Droid Razr in 2011 supported the Lapdock 100, well before the Atrix itself even though the Atrix received a lot more advertisement for the feature. A lot of patents are not worth the pdf file they are printed on...

Someone at the patent office needs to be fired

[ausekilis]

..Located in the base portion, this slot might also incorporate a communications interface and a means of power transfer, perhaps Lightning or a Smart Connector.

Perhaps it will have a Firewire adaptor, a db-25 port, or attach directly to your favorite adult toy. "Perhaps" is such a non-specific word this alone should fail any sort of novelty test.

Alternatively, a host device might transfer data and commands to the accessory via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or other wireless protocol. Onboard memory modules would further extend an iOS device's capabilities. Though the document fails to delve into details, accessory memory would presumably allow an iPhone or iPad to write and read app data. ...
Alternatively, certain embodiments have an iPad serving as the accessory's screen, with keyboard, memory, GPU and other operating guts located in the attached base portion.

So, just like the Microsoft Surface, then? Or is this more like any of the android tablets that have cases with bluetooth keyboards built-in?

This latter design resembles a beefed up version of Apple's Smart Case for iPad.

Oh, so they have their own prior art.

Re: They don't fit

[MachineShedFred]

What the hell are you doing with your phone to drain the battery in "barely a day" ? My iPhone lasts for 3 days easy, receiving email and push notifications all day, bluetooth turned on 24/7, mostly on WiFi the whole time.

Re:You mean like my 6 year old Atrix

[squiggleslash]

The Atrix was exactly where I hoped phones were going and I was so disappointed to see Motorola drop it, and nobody else pick up (I couldn't buy the Atrix because it was Verizon only.) At one point Canonical had an alpha of a Ubuntu/Android hybrid which was intended to be similar, but that seems to have disappeared completely too.

It'd be piddlingly easy to do in hardware to the point I doubt it'd change the cost of the device by more than a few cents - make sure the USB port is bidirectional (it probably is already) and put in an HDMI out (maybe using MHL.) The software... well, as I said, Canonical already had something, Microsoft has Windows 10, there's a few prototype Android desktops out there which, if a community rallied around them, could be made usable.

This is not hard, it's just nobody seems to want to do it.

Re:a laptop with no user file system and sandboxed

[thebullshitpatrol]

Steve Jobs wanted the iPad to be a little mac, not a big iPhone. We can only dream.

How is that abandoning them?

[chispito]

It sounds like you make some great points. What does that have to do with abandoning their user base? Was there an announcement also that they were discontinuing their Mac business?

Re:Battery brick

[slashrio]

It's a headline fuck-up. Has (almost) nothing to do with power.