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Apple Files Patent For a Crumb-Resistant MacBook Keyboard (digitaltrends.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the clean-as-a-whistle dept.

According to a patent application made public on Thursday, March 8, Apple could be developing a new MacBook keyboard designed to prevent crumbs and dust from getting those super-shallow MacBook keys stuck. "Liquid ingress around the keys into the keyboard can damage electronics. Residues from such liquids may corrode or block electrical contacts, getting in the way of key movement and so on," the patent application reads. Digital Trends reports: The application goes on to describe how those problems might be remedied: With the careful application of gaskets, brushes, wipers, or flaps that block gaps beneath keycaps. One solution would include a membrane beneath each key, effectively insulating the interior of the keyboard from the exterior, while another describes using each keypress as a "bellows" to force contaminants out of the keyboard. "A keyboard assembly [could include] a substrate, a key cap, and a guard structure extending from the key cap that funnels contaminants away from the movement mechanism," the patent application reads.

50 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. design flaw by fluffernutter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It was a design flaw to create a keyboard that couldn't be cleaned in the first place. More of Apple putting form over function. Besides.. there are laptops with waterproof keyboards already, how is a dust free keyboard even eligible for a new patent?

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    1. Re:design flaw by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Funny

      Besides.. there are laptops with waterproof keyboards already, how is a dust free keyboard even eligible for a new patent?

      Most of these keyboards advertise that they are "spill resistant."

      This one from Apple is "crumb resistant."

      Also, while the others protect against spills, Apple's protects against "liquid ingress."

      Most keyboards only go up to 10. Apple's goes up to 11.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    2. Re:design flaw by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It was a design flaw to create a keyboard that couldn't be cleaned in the first place. More of Apple putting form over function. Besides.. there are laptops with waterproof keyboards already, how is a dust free keyboard even eligible for a new patent?

      It was a design flaw for God to create you.

      Honestly, my work Samsung laptop has keys that are completely un-cleanable. It is also non-water-resistant, causing me to now have to carry-around an external keyboard, because the built-in keyboard now has a few non-functional keys, due to a spilled splash of coffee. And the laptop has to be disassembled down to the very last screw to replace the keyboard.

      Yes, I know Mac laptops are the same in the replacement needing almost complete disassembly. One of the few things I don't like about Apple's "unibody" laptop design.

    3. Re:design flaw by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It was a design flaw to create a keyboard that couldn't be cleaned in the first place. More of Apple putting form over function.

      Actually the keyboards on MacBooks are easier to clean than the more traditional style because of the wide gaps between the keys and the tiny gaps between the keys and the chassis. Some people find them awkward to type on, but that's by the by. Why don't you put aside your knee-jerk reaction to anything Apple and take a good look at any other laptop, then think about how you can get dirt out from underneath the key caps.

      In my experience the only keyboards that are really easy to clean are the ones usually seen attached to desktops; you can either open them up, remove the circuit board and put it in a dishwasher, or pop off all the keys and get access that way.

    4. Re:design flaw by movdqa · · Score: 2

      I have a 2014 and the keyboard is fine. My next upgrade would be a 2015. No interest in a touch bar or a laptop without enough ports.

    5. Re:design flaw by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      ThinkPad keyboards have been liquid proof since the 90s. They have channels for the liquid to drain through. Tough book/Dynabook keyboards too.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:design flaw by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Apple started the island key bullshit. Flat tops so your fingers can't sense when they are well centred without feeling for the edges. Difficult to clean, very little travel or tactile feel... And more work to replace if it breaks.

      Lenovo had better, liquid proof keyboards in the 90s. They still do.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:design flaw by LordKronos · · Score: 2

      Most keyboards only go up to 10.

      God damn it, why the fuck didn't someone tell me this earlier? Apparently I've spent my entire life using substandard keyboards that only go up to 9.

    8. Re:design flaw by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I saw "Liquid ingress around the keys into the keyboard can damage electronics" and thought, gee, I'm glad I bought a thinkpad because liquid that lands on the keyboard doesn't ingress to a part of the electronics that would be damaged! LOL

      I guess it is only because I'm willing to carry around a business laptop that looks like a business laptop that they had enough room in the case for the drain ports.

    9. Re:design flaw by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Yeah! I feel with you! And worst of it, after the 9 comes a 0!! What is it doing there?
      All sane programmers have their arrays start with 0, so the 0 should be to the left! Such a no brainer!
      Sigh, we are surrounded by retards.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    10. Re:design flaw by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I don't know what Lenovo had in the 90s, I only bought IBM laptops back then. ;)

      But I was scared when I heard the new Thinkpads have chiclet keys... but they're not flat, and they feel mostly the same. The sides are different, on the part you don't touch. Better than most desktop keyboards. Long throw, with crisp motion. They don't have as much tactile response on the bottom of the throw, but the keypress already happened by then; they have clean tactile response on the initial press. Also, they're way easier to clean, and replacement is exactly the same; the hard parts of replacement have nothing to do with the keys.

      The feel is higher quality than a dome switch, and very similar to a mid grade mechanical switch. Which makes sense; they're a scissor switch that is like a combination of a mechanical switch and a dome switch.

    11. Re:design flaw by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      It was a design flaw to create a keyboard that couldn't be cleaned in the first place.

      Yes it is, and every PC and gadget maker copies this design flaw into their own products.

    12. Re:design flaw by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Your 2014 probably doesn't have the new "butterfly" keyboard.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    13. Re:design flaw by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      My old Apple full-size aluminium keyboard goes up to F19.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    14. Re:design flaw by movdqa · · Score: 1

      No, I don't. And I don't want it. I've seen and played with the Butterfly Keyboard and don't like it. My favorite Apple Laptop keyboard is from the 2008 17 inch MBP. Decent key travel, nicely tapered, very small gaps between keys.

    15. Re:design flaw by Freischutz · · Score: 1

      Apple started the island key bullshit. Flat tops so your fingers can't sense when they are well centred without feeling for the edges. Difficult to clean, very little travel or tactile feel... And more work to replace if it breaks.

      Lenovo had better, liquid proof keyboards in the 90s. They still do.

      Difficult to clean? I've never had any problems with that, if a vacuum cleaner doesn't do the job get a compressed air bottle, hold the lattop so that the keyboard is vertical and blast the dirt out of the keyboard. So far even the 12" MacBook keyboard hasn't given me any problems and the one time I had to have a keyboard replaced it was done under warranty without any complaint. As for 'travel' and 'tactile feels' Im don't spend my days pining for the legendary IBM Model F so I don't really care.

    16. Re:design flaw by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      Tried it.. The space around the keys is so infinitesimally small not enough air gets in at the right angle to do anything.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    17. Re:design flaw by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      Learn how to drink coffee.

      I know how to drink coffee. I was just falling-asleep-at-the-keyboard, and the cup started to tip, and...

  2. new mbp keyboards are the worst by spoot · · Score: 1

    The keyboards on the newer macbook pros suck. I could explain whym, but to do so I would have to continue typing on this piece of crap.

  3. Re:Design a nazi-killing macbook keyboard by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

    ..or have a lot of pets, or are doing construction, or the many other things that cause dust in houses.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  4. What about by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    one without rb?

  5. Prior art by Jeremi · · Score: 2

    This problem was 100% solved back in the 80's. C'mon Apple, do the courageous thing and follow suit!

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    1. Re:Prior art by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This isn't really the issue. It's the patent office.

      WTF is patentable about some vague concoction full of 'brushes, gaskets, wipers or flaps'? I thought patents were supposed to be about *specific* arrangements of various things to perform a function.

      That's the hard part, not 'hey, we could make a keyboard crumb proof' - which is what this appears to be about.

      Prior art, indeed.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:Prior art by Daetrin · · Score: 3, Informative

      Some more recent prior art, the OLPC project:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      And i'm sure those are far from the only examples.

      --
      This Space Intentionally Left Blank
    3. Re:Prior art by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I hope so, because both those "solutions" are synonymous with "this keyboard needed to be replaced after 1 year because the buttons wore off and cracks formed.

    4. Re:Prior art by WorBlux · · Score: 1

      prior art is anything previously published.

    5. Re:Prior art by Freischutz · · Score: 1

      This problem was 100% solved back in the 80's. C'mon Apple, do the courageous thing and follow suit!

      Did you ever actually try to use a ZX81? ... You see, I didn't just try a ZX81 out at the computer museum once, I actually owned a ZX81 and those keyboards were awful, just plain bloody awful.

    6. Re:Prior art by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      Did you ever actually try to use a ZX81? ... You see, I didn't just try a ZX81 out at the computer museum once, I actually owned a ZX81 and those keyboards were awful, just plain bloody awful.

      I sure did -- I spent most of third grade with painful bruises on all of my fingertips. It was totally worth it, though ;)

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    7. Re:Prior art by sad_ · · Score: 1

      read it and thought the same thing.
      and on top of that, 'modern' keyboards are already bad enough, and i though it couldn't get much worse, but hey, it looks like apple might pull it of.

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  6. Intentionally consumer-hostile design by sremick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A better move would be to simply make the keyboard repairable/replaceable like other laptop manufacturers do. Instead, it's made part of the main chassis along with a glued-in battery which amounts to $260+ in parts alone, let alone an insane amount of labor, just to replace one of the 2 most-damaged parts of the laptop (the other being the screen, which they make cost 5X what it should in order to extort money from users that way too).

    No matter how crumb-resistant or liquid-resistant you try to make the keyboard, it's still going to need to get replaced often.

    1. Re:Intentionally consumer-hostile design by cmseagle · · Score: 1

      Those design decisions you criticize allow them to make the laptop sleek and sexy. Outside of the Slashdot/techy crowd that's what sells laptops, not repairability.

  7. Re:Câ(TM)mon Tim.... by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

    I don't eat over my laptop either, yet the keyboard for my 2017 Macbook pro sounds like I'm walking on a old theater floor with dried soda goop and squished gummy candies all over it. It's quite annoying. I'm assuming Applecare will cover it.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  8. weird. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I find it convenient to turn the computer off and wipe it down. No patent required.

  9. How about bug resistant screens by labnet · · Score: 2

    My wifes imac had a bug crawl between the LCD and diffuser and promptly die. It was about 5 pixels big!
    Kudos to Apple for replacing it, but you think they could at least seal their screens to stop insects that are attracted to bright lights from crawling in there.

    --
    46137
    1. Re:How about bug resistant screens by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      You can't fully seal a screen and still be able to use it after the seasons change, or after you take it to a different climate than it was in last.

      If you didn't need the screen to be able to breath to prevent moisture getting trapped, then you could just seal it so that can't happen. But you have to have air flow, which means a porous gasket. Even with a great gasket an insect can still chew through, or just push through in many cases; it might be strong when pulled or pushed, but still weak to direct lateral mechanical force. It is fairly easy and straightforwards to keep most of the insects out most of the time, but it would be nearly impossible to keep them all out all of the time.

      Probably only Apple users are surprised by any of that; usually they expect there to be a little robot inside that looks like Steve Jobs that will fight off any invading bugs using cloud mana. But no, you can't update that away.

    2. Re:How about bug resistant screens by pipingguy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Are you sure it was a bug and not a feature?

    3. Re:How about bug resistant screens by Khyber · · Score: 1

      "You can't fully seal a screen and still be able to use it after the seasons change"

      I can tell you've never worked in an LCD repair depot before.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    4. Re:How about bug resistant screens by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I know how to industrial design a portable computer system with an LCD, so I wouldn't bother to worry about what specific training they might give people in repair depots.

      Repair people are not experts at how the devices they repair actually work. If they're expert at their job, then they're an expert at deciphering the excuses people make when they break something, and can figure out what really happened well enough to guess which subsystem to test first. They know what the replacement parts are, and how to install them. There is no reason at all to think that they know why the engineers designing a system chose part A instead of part B. What they know is only if the part number is supposed to fit on a particular model, and if it does in practice.

      You can work your whole life with protected screens without ever needing to know anything about the properties of the double-sided adhesive foam that you place between the front glass and the other parts of the assembly. You would never, in 30 years or 300 years, need to know about that, because the design engineer is the one who chooses the type of foam to use. You're only replacing it. You have no need to know what the words "fully sealed" would mean, or if that double-sided foam fully seals it. It doesn't, that's the whole point! But a repair person doesn't get that feedback. The engineer who seals the case completely and then loses his job, well guess what that product might not have even made it to production, or if it did, few units of that model were sold before the problem became apparent and there was a recall. The repair guy doesn't know about that. Even if he knows there is a recall and knows it is from condensation, that's all he knows, the words "design flaw."

      Even a hard disk isn't fully sealed. It wouldn't work long if it was. And a computer repair person in 1000 years on the job would never have been asked to repair a hard disk vent, so they may or may not have ever even bothered to learn what that part was.

  10. Keyboard condom by mark-t · · Score: 1

    I can't remember what the real name for it is, but it's basically a form fitting transparent sleeve that completely covers the keyboard and is easy to remove for cleaning and replace.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:Keyboard condom by Misagon · · Score: 1

      I think "keyboard sleeve" is the term that it is sold as.
      ... and there exist of course third-party keyboard sleeves for multiple types of Apple chiclet keyboards already.

      And yes, as a keyboard collector and enthusiast I have seen (and owned) several examples of prior art with the dust/water-protecting membrane between mechanical key switch and hard keycap surface.
      None of those were scissor switches though but that should not matter -- The scissors do not affect the protection scheme.
      I have not read the application with a fine-toothed comb but it looks to me like it is not original enough.

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
  11. Apple has solved their own problem. by berchca · · Score: 2

    MacBook users may rejoice, knowing that maybe their next $1,000+ computer won't have the same problems their current $1,000+ computer does...

    Fashion before substance!

  12. Been there, done that by MichaelJ · · Score: 1

    Will it be like the Timex Sinclair 1000 keyboard, the Atari 400 keyboard, the PC Jr keyboard, or the original TI99-4 keyboard? They all kept out liquids and crumbs. Oh, and they sucked.

    --

    Michael J.
    Root, God, what is difference?
    1. Re:Been there, done that by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      My first home computer was a Timex/Sinclair 1000.

      Perhaps you saw a new device in the store, so it would make sense you thought it would keep out liquids. But that style of metalicized plastic dome tend to crack. The key thing to understand isn't that plastic can keep water out, it is that it can also keep it in. The foil tends to pinhole, and just using the computer in a cold room can cause condensation on the inside of the keys. It isn't the keys you press that stick, but when you press a key, then the most cracked nearby key will join the fun and stick!

      If you think you understand how awful that keyboard is just because you touched it and found out why they called it a "dead flesh" keyboard, you still have no idea.

      This is Apple, it isn't going to be ugly and poorly designed, it is going to be beautiful and poorly designed. So at least PC Jr level.

  13. Patent the obvious by OFnow · · Score: 1

    All the crumb (etc) things the introduction mentions seem obvious to anyone who has used a keyboard. If any of it gets a patent...it would be crazy.

  14. You speak with God? by JackAxe · · Score: 1

    The guy makes a level headed criticism and you personally attack him.

    Maybe you need less coffee? That would eliminate the chance of you being careless. Maybe something you've eaten is making you cranky? For me it's wheat. Regardless, lighten up Francis!

    And I'd rather have a computer I can take a part -- even if it takes every screw -- than one that's most likely glued/soldered together. It's why I stopped buying Macs.

  15. Beat Apple to it... by VeryFluffyBunny · · Score: 1

    Hey Apple, somebody already fixed that problem for you for only $8.99: https://www.amazon.ca/Mosiso-K... You can wash it up in your kitchen sink too :)

    --
    Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
  16. copy thinkpad keyboards by eagl · · Score: 1

    Lenovo (IBM) thinkpad keyboards have been water and crumb resistant for ages. Maybe Apple should just license the applicable patents and be done with it instead of re-inventing a perfectly good wheel.

  17. Glass keyboard by kdekorte · · Score: 1

    Eventually Apple will probably just have a glass keyboard (like on the iPad). Solves the problem of localized keys (cost savings) and crumbs. But it will be hell to type on all day and will offer no feedback. Maybe they can combine it with their haptic touchpad to solve that problem. I think that is why they are experimenting with the touch bar to see if people will accept a fully glass keyboard. So far people are not to happy about the touch bar, so maybe there is some hope.

  18. It's not prior art if it's completely different by radarskiy · · Score: 1

    As none of the proposed claims in Apple's patent application refer to single-piece membranes overlain across the entire keyboard, examples of single-piece membranes are not prior art which would invalidate those claims.

    Did anyone bother to read what Apple is claiming in the patent application?

  19. Cooling by Amanitin · · Score: 1

    Aren't the holes under the keys the inlet for the cooling air? I thought that's how they eliminated the grilles on the side and the bottom of the case. If so, how are they going to make the keyboard crumbtight?