Apple has just filed the patent. It suggests a possible evolution of MacBook laptop keyboards toward virtual keys and with flexible, pressure-sensitive surfaces.
Over the past few years, Apple has had issues with MacBook Pro , particularly those with the butterfly mechanism. The latter are often vulnerable to the ingress of dust and debris which caused the keys to malfunction. The problem was only partially circumvented in 2018. But the fact remains that the keyboard design is still prone to dirt.
Apple is considering more radical solutions to resolve this problem, as evidenced by a patent issued to it yesterday by the US Patent Office. This patent called “Configurable Pressure Sensitive Input Structure for Electronic Devices”, describes a keyboard with the trackpad, consisting of a pressure sensitive surface, flexible and with some sort of underlying display capable of representing virtual keys.
A more-than-touch keyboard
Reading the patent, it appears to be different from touchscreen keyboards for iPad. It would not be a simple touch screen but a more complex input system which reacts to pressure (therefore to the force exerted and not to simple touch). It is therefore capable of flexing under the user's fingers. This would then be combined with a feedback system, so that the user could perceptually register the keystroke and thus have a convincing response to the pressure.
The device would then offer all the versatility of a typical virtual keyboard application, with a layout and controls that could change depending on the needs or operating context. A tweak like this wouldn't necessarily require removing physical keyboards.
This is an interesting approach, which attempts to overcome the limits of mechanical keyboards (key breakage, etc.) and those of virtual ones (non-optimal response of use). However, it's good to remember that this is just a patent, not necessarily intended to become anything real in the short term.
