Patent hints at potential MacBook upgrade: Apple mini-LED keyboard may get dynamic legends
From the unpopular Touch Bar to the extremely issue-prone butterfly keyboard, Apple has struggled to develop successful new keyboard technologies over the past decade. Besides its poor reliability, the butterfly keyboard's keys and switches can’t be replaced individually. Nonetheless, this hasn’t stopped the Cupertino-based tech giant from working on new innovations to make the keyboards on MacBook Pro or MacBook Air models (approx. $912 on Amazon) more useful.
Apple previously patented a touchscreen keyboard, which in practice could significantly impact battery life regardless of whether each key is equipped with a tiny display or the entire keyboard is a gigantic touch panel. AppleInsider recently uncovered a new Apple patent that describes another approach to dynamic keyboards. Instead of relying on a display, this design uses multiple LEDs for each key to depict the desired symbols.
Since this new design would render LED backlights, found on all current MacBook keyboards, obsolete, it shouldn't significantly increase power usage. The keys themselves are made of aluminium and feature conventional switches with a scissor mechanism. For illumination, the design employs mini-LEDs to achieve a sufficiently high resolution, ensuring symbols are well legible.
This design could allow users to customise their keyboard layout with much greater flexibility. For instance, they may be able to effortlessly toggle between regional keyboard layouts by pressing a button. It's uncertain whether these LEDs would be bright enough to make keycap legends legible in the sun. As is usual with such patents, this concept doesn’t necessarily indicate that Apple is planning to release a laptop with this keyboard design.
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