Apple has long been aiming to make MacBooks thinner and thinner, and a new patent granted today describes how a retractable keyboard can help.
Earlier patents suggest that Apple’s long-term goal is a fully solid-state keyboard, which uses electrostatic charges to enable users to “feel” keys so typing remains possible, and haptic motors to simulate keystrokes for feeling of a physical keyboard …
This patent does not go that far, but enables Apple to thin laptops while still retaining the physical key movement.
Apple explains in the background that physical keyboards make laptops thicker than would be the case with touch-based keys.
Keyboards can contain keys with keycaps that move when pressed by a user, and the movement of the keycap can cause a paired device to perform action or function. As another example, electronic devices on the hand, such as smartphones, may contain buttons with drive elements that move when pressed and cause the electronic device to act or function accordingly. Due to the movement of key caps or other controls, input devices with movable components may be larger than input devices that do not have movable components.
What Apple is proposing is to use a magnetic system to allow the keys to function normally when used, but to pull them back inside the lower case when the laptop is locked.
The keyboard may include a substrate and a key mechanism that includes a keycap support mechanism, a keycap supported by the keycap support mechanism, a ferromagnetic component coupled to the keycap support mechanism, and a selectively magnetizable magnet system. . The selectively magnetizable magnet system contains a magnetizable material, and a coil configured to selectively magnetize and demagnetize the magnetizable material.
The keyboard can be bistable (i.e., can be held in either position without external power); the position of the keyboard may vary as the magnetizable material is magnetized or demagnetized.
At first glance, it looks like it describes an electromagnetic system, which means that force is used to hold the keys in the retracted position. However, the patent makes it clear that this would not be the case: Apple instead uses materials that require an initial application of force to magnetize it, and then it remains magnetized when the power is cut off.
When the magnetizable material is magnetized, the magnetizable material can produce a continuous magnetic field which is maintained without the coil being applied continuously.
Apple gives aluminum-nickel cobalt iron and chrome cobalt iron as examples of suitable materials for use in the retractable keyboard.
Of course, the usual patent release applies – Apple patents numerous things that it never brings to market – but just the thought of a new MacBook keyboard design is enough to make me feel nervous …
Via Patently Apple
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