Apple could be working on dual-screen MacBook Pro with wireless charging

macbook dual screen concept furkan kasap

MacBook virtual keyboard concept image (Image credit: Furkan Kasap)

Would y'all be interested in buying a MacBook that didn't have a physical keyboard? Apple has merely been awarded a new patent for a dual-screen MacBook device, which utilizes a virtual keyboard instead.

Then instead of typing away on physical keys, you'll exist using what could hands be an enlarged version of the Touch on Bar. Equally weird as that sounds, it yet feels like a amend option than the much-maligned Butterfly keyboard.

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According to Patently Apple this virtual keyboard could be customized, with users able to bandy the position of the keyboard and trackpad, also equally support for ergonomic designs and dissimilar keyboard layouts. That would be specially useful from a production standpoint, since Apple tree could create i MacBook without having to adjust the keyboard for each region.

macbook dual screen virtual keyboard — (Image credit: USPTO)

And for those of you worried about using the smooth, glossy finish of a touchscreen compared to the tactile experience of concrete buttons, you're in luck. The thought here is that the virtual keyboard will also offer haptic and audio feedback, designed to "evangelize a natural keyboard feel."

Presumably that will involve an audible clicking sound and a haptic response to tell you that yous've actually hitting the key correctly, something touchscreen keyboards generally lack.

But if the user prefers, there could also exist an option for a mechanical keyboard improver that sits on summit of the virtual brandish. Also detailed are multiple Touch ID sensors along the front end of the MacBook, Confront ID, and a wireless charger in the bottom left-hand corner.

macbook dual screen patent — (Image credit: USPTO)

The patent also mentions that the virtual keyboard could be used as a game controller, while also potentially offering different kinds of touch on input. Gestures, multi impact, swiping, and all those other things that are available on iPhone and iPads, but not on the touchscreen-free MacBooks.

To summit it all off, in that location would too be a palm rejection system in place, and so you tin can rest your hands and wrists on the surface area that doubles as a trackpad, without actually causing any problems.

Could we see this dual screen MacBook one solar day?

apple macbook dual screen patent — (Paradigm credit: USPTO)

The matter nigh patents is that having them isn't the same equally planning to use them. Certain Apple may have worked upwardly several designs to show how a virtual MacBook keyboard could work, but that doesn't mean it's going to be happening anytime presently.

Specially seeing as how this would be pretty ambitious. Dual-screen laptops exercise exist, but they're not exactly common and they haven't taken off in whatsoever meaningful way. Function of that volition be downwards to the fact that replacing a keyboard with a touchscreen isn't equally easy as calculation a second virtual display.

Touchscreen keyboards work for basic phone and tablet apply, merely typing on a touchscreen panel is totally unlike to typing on a physical keyboard with physical buttons. Particularly if you lot touch-type, since physical keys are a lot easier to apply without looking.

Apple tree'southward patent goes someway to trying to solve this issue, just nosotros'd have to see it for existent to say whether it works or non. Ideas may audio good on paper, just they don't always pan out the way they should.

Similar the infamous Butterfly keyboard, which was supposed to offering the keys more space to move, while being thinner than traditional scissor switch keyboards. Plain that didn't work out and so well, given how universally loathed butterfly keyboards are.

The virtual keyboard panel is an interesting idea, but it's not likely 1 nosotros'll be seeing anytime presently. Barring a few flawed designs that make their may to production, physical keyboards are pretty fool proof mechanisms. And changing that for something less reliable doesn't do anyone any favors.

We volition just have to encounter what Apple does over the next several years.

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Tom is the Tom's Guide'due south Automotive Editor, which means he tin can ordinarily be institute knee deep in stats the latest and best electric cars, or checking out some sort of driving gadget. It's long way from his days as editor of Gizmodo Great britain, when pretty much everything was on the table. He'south normally plant trying to clasp another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of java, or complaining that Ikea won't permit him purchase the stuff he really needs online.