New Apple Patent Imagines an OLED Screen As a Keyboard For MacBooks (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted Apple a patent titled "dual display equipment with enhanced visibility and suppressed reflections." The documentation for what is patent number 9,904,502 outlines a device that would use a second display as a dynamic keyboard. Two implementations of this design are described in the patent application, according to Patently Apple. The first utilizes a permanent hinge, while the second allows the screen to be removed and used separately, along the lines of Microsoft's Surface Pro range and other two-in-one computers. The patent documentation makes it clear that the implementation is not intended as an accessory that would allow two iPads to be paired together, with one serving as the keyboard. Additionally, illustrations associated with the application explicitly state that one screen is an OLED display, while the other is an LCD. A double-display set-up could provide easy access to a different keyboard layout language, context-sensitive controls, or even a large sketching surface to use in conjunction with something like an Apple Pencil. However, that flexibility would come at the cost of the traditional typing experience offered by a mechanical keyboard.

Comments

Remember the Optimus Maximus keyboard?

[cjellibebi]

At least that was a proper keyboard with pressable keys and all. Each key had it's own display.

Prior Art

[NicknameUnavailable]

http://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/tactus/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/9836/
https://store.artlebedev.com/for-programmers/objects/optimus-popularis/

Re:Typing would be a nightmare

[Greyfox]

Yup. Really, this is a trivial patent. If no one's patented it yet, it's because it's stupid. It's already infuriating having to switch between an Macbook keyboard at work and an actually good keyboard at home. It'll just be that much worse if the Macbook doesn't actually have any keys to press. However, I still hope they do this as it should make it that much easier to convince management that Macbooks are shit for development work.