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

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.

Comments

design flaw

[fluffernutter]

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?

Re:design flaw

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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.

Re:design flaw

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Intentionally consumer-hostile design

[sremick]

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.

Re:Prior art

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Re:Prior art

[Daetrin]

Some more recent prior art, the OLPC project:

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

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

Re:How about bug resistant screens

[pipingguy]

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