Apple Continues Development Of Glass MacBooks With Virtual Keyboard And Trackpad

Apple is developing a full glass-designed MacBook (photo: dock. apple)

JAKARTA Apple continues to work on developing a full-glass MacBook equipped with a virtual keyboard and trackpad, showing that the project is still active. A number of patents issued show Apple's efforts to create this device, with technology aimed at emulating physical sensations from keyboards and trackpads.

Apple has long been known to dare to remove physical keyboards, for the first time when it revolutionized the smartphone market with the iPhone launch in 2007. Steve Jobs at the time said that the main advantage of the keyboard on the screen was his ability to change according to application needs. However, in recent years, Apple has switched to adding physical buttons to devices like Action Button and Camera Control on the iPhone.

One of the biggest challenges in developing a MacBook with full glass is to make users feel as if they are using a physical keyboard. Apple has tried to solve this problem by using a haptic feedback technology, which is currently applied to the MacBook trackpad. Although the trackpad doesn't really click, the sensation generated by a haptic motor feels very convincing.

However, challenges with keyboards are much more complex. The user's finger requires a pressing sensation before completely typing, and the physical keyboard provides comfort and speed of typing that is not easily imitated by glass.

Apple has been doing various studies for a long time to create a virtual keyboard that can mimic the comfort of physical keyboards. In 2018, Apple proposed three approaches to glassy MacBooks, including:

While there is currently no new breakthrough in the latest patent discovered by Patently Apple, this indicates that Apple is continuing this project.

Is it possible that Apple managed to create a glassy MacBook with a virtual keyboard that looks like a real keyboard? This technology still seems to need several years of further development, but Apple is optimistic about achieving its goals.