New MacBook could have killer 'reconfigurable' keyboard

New MacBook could accept killer 'reconfigurable' keyboard

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Forget the Touch Bar: The next MacBook could have a dynamically reconfigurable keyboard, according to a new patent filing.

Spotted by Obviously Apple, the filing describes how each primal could include its own display, allowing for each cardinal's label and corresponding input to modify according to the user's needs, which could make some of the best laptops even ameliorate.

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"The dynamic labels may exist generated using dynamically reconfigurable characterization displaying components such as organic lite-emitting diode displays with arrays of pixels, electrophoretic displays with arrays of pixels, or other pixel arrays," reads the patent description, which was initially filed in Dec 2019.

Plain there's nada special virtually changing keyboard inputs, but this would allow the key labels to change on the fly as well. For case, if y'all wanted to switch between two unlike languages, you could have the keyboard display bandy between the two sets of letters and symbols. Alternatively you lot could bind keys to perform certain actions in applications or games and set each key to display an appropriate symbol.

MacBook keyboard patent — (Image credit: USPTO)

This vaguely resembles an extension of what Apple tree'due south TouchBar tin can also already exercise, but with the added do good of having concrete keys instead of merely turning the bottom half of the MacBook into a behemothic touchscreen. The patent mentions and illustrates a mechanical-style keyswitch and keycap design, so information technology does sound like the grade factor would resemble a standard keyboard, just with lilliputian displays in each key.

It's not just MacBooks, either: the patent illustrations show how such a design could be applied to the standalone keyboards you lot might utilise with an iMac, Mac Pro or Mac mini.

Where the MacBook is concerned this does sound like a particularly format-suitable counterpart to (or replacement for) the TouchBar, though at that place's no guarantee that we'll see MacBooks with reconfigurable keyboards in the imminent future. In fact, Apple has been working on this very concept for more than a decade: MacRumors reported on a similar patent filing by Apple, for a keyboard with OLED displays on each primal, all the style back in 2008. Some additional refining of the concept might therefore show necessary.

James is currently Hardware Editor at Rock Newspaper Shotgun, but earlier that was Audio Editor at Tom'south Guide, where he covered headphones, speakers, soundbars and annihilation else that intentionally makes noise. A PC enthusiast, he also wrote computing and gaming news for TG, usually relating to how difficult it is to find graphics card stock.