Recent Apple patent imagines the Magic Keyboard with a Mac built-in

A new patent has been published by the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) that was filed by Apple back In August 2020. The patent is for an Apple keyboard device that is essentially a portable Mac computer.

The patent explains this is a “computer in an input device”, that’s essentially a Mac mini if it was crammed into a Magic Keyboard housing. “A strong demand for portable computing devices which also deliver high performance has driven miniaturization and reduction in size of the once bulky computing components used to power and drive the devices,” reads the patent.

The keyboard housing would contain all the components like “processors, batteries, memory, integrated circuits” so that the user would only need to hook it up to a monitor. In addition to mentions using heat-conductive materials to dissipate heat generated by such a device, the patent says that a portable computer in a keyboard could even be folded to make it even more compact. There may even be a Trackpad built-into the keyboard so that the user doesn’t even need to bring a pointing device.

The patent doesn’t really show one kind of device, but rather many possible hardware configurations and methods for a portable keyboard/computer to make sense. This patent doesn’t confirm that Apple will ever make such a product, but it’s fun to imagine what if.

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