William Gallagher
Apple's Magic Keyboard may one day become more magical, and possibly a little thicker, as the company is working on ways to include an entire Mac within it.
Steve Jobs made a big of thing of how the little Mac mini was a BYODKM, or Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, and Mouse, device. Now it seems Apple is looking at cutting that down even further, to when all you need to bring is your own display.
"Computer in an input device," is a newly-granted patent that proposes an entire Mac that's the size of a keyboard. And would also be a keyboard.
Reminiscent of countless 1980s computers like the Apple II, Vic 20, and the Sinclair QL, a computer made following this patent would look like it was just a keyboard. It would be bigger or taller than a current Apple Magic Keyboard, but perhaps not by all that much.
"A strong demand for portable computing devices which also deliver high performance," says the patent, "has driven miniaturization and reduction in size of the once bulky computing components used to power and drive the devices."
"Components, such as processors, batteries, memory, integrated circuits, and the like," it continues, "are now being manufactured within smaller footprints to provide lightweight and thin portable computing devices."
Apple argues that therefore "further tailoring of housing designs, shapes, and configurations to provide additional or enhanced device functionality" is possible - and desirable.
That's really the thrust of the entire patent, as the majority of its more 130,000 words is detailing methods for ventilating such a keyboard to keep components cool.
There are, though, multiple references to making such a device even more portable. For one instance, Apple says that the "computing device can be foldable about an axis."
And for another, "where a user might desire the device... to have wireless internet connectivity, [it[ can include a cellular antenna."
That comes in a section that is really concerned the space available for components, more than it is about what the specific components would be. It does argue what they do not have to be, though: its own display.
"This device configuration can allow a user to carry a single computing device," says Apple, "that can provide a desktop computing experience at any location having one or more computer monitors."
This patent is credited to three inventors, including Brett W. Degner. His previous related work includes a patent concerning making an iMac from one sheet of glass.
AppleInsider Staff
Malcolm Owen
Oliver Haslam
Andrew O'Hara
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
61 Comments
So what is fundamentally different between this and the current Raspberry Pi 400, other than the Apple end products having higher end components? Well, that and the several hundred plus more dollars an Apple product would cost.
So, 1 key breaks and you have to take the whole computer in?
How could Apple possibly think this was patentable. The article mentions several examples of prior designs. I want to add the Commodore 64 which is where I first ran into it. This is an OLD concept. Let me add as well that a friend of mine had a Commodore 64. Had two of them actually. The first one lasted a month before his son accidentally dumped a Coke into it and fried everything. This is the reason an all in one, computer-in-the-keyboard is a VERY bad idea. Keyboards catch the worst of what users drop. They need to be cheap and replaceable. Keep the CPU up where it is safe, crumb free, and dry.
EDIT: Yes I know laptops are essentially the same thing. Somehow users seem to treat laptops better than desktop keyboards. Not sure why, but over the years I replaced a lot of keyboards that got destroyed by users in various creative ways. Wasn't nearly as much of a problem with a laptop.