Thin MacBook Laptop Concept Images

[melchior]

First of all, Simon Posford is a god amongst men.

Moving on however, I too felt strongly about the need for tactile feedback. I am quite picky about keyboards and I must say I am not particularly fond of the MB keyboard, though I do like the MBP.

My opinion was changed however when I began using the iphone. It is the technology applied in predictive text input that does it for me. I would be happy to use a multi-touch screen as a keyboard. I realised I don't need tactile feedback. I think I could actually type faster using the predictive text, I wish Leo had it. I think it will mean less typing mistakes.

I am a proponent of the multi-touch keyboard. However I believe it is really only functional if you are touch-typer. It would be a hell of a way to learn to type as your first keyboard...

An implementation where the keyboard is omitted and replaced by a digital equivalent displayed and controlled on a touch screen sounds rather unpractical.
Without actually being able to feel the layout of a physical keyboard beneath your fingers, there is no way you could type properly while looking away from the keys at other areas of the screen (to check if you're not making any typos for example). You'd constantly have to be looking at your fingers to see if they line up correctly. And this raises another problem.
The average posture of a person using a laptop (or any keyboard for that matter) places the users eyes at quite a bit of angle away from the plane of the keyboard.
Considering the limitations of small scale LCD screens in regards to viewing angles, looking at such screens under strong angles does no favors for their legibility.

Touch keyboards make sense for tiny consumer devices such as iPhones and iPods, but not for a laptop where productivity (read: text input) is likely to be vital.

 

[airjuggernaut]

As long as the video card isn't better then the Macbook's, this is one Macworld I wont care about

 

[Lone Deranger]

First of all, Simon Posford is a god amongst men.

Hahaha.... Yes! Yes he is indeed! "There is an area of the mind that could be called unsane, beyond sanity, and yet not insane."

Moving on however, I too felt strongly about the need for tactile feedback. I am quite picky about keyboards and I must say I am not particularly fond of the MB keyboard, though I do like the MBP.

My opinion was changed however when I began using the iphone. It is the technology applied in predictive text input that does it for me. I would be happy to use a multi-touch screen as a keyboard. I realised I don't need tactile feedback. I think I could actually type faster using the predictive text, I wish Leo had it. I think it will mean less typing mistakes.

I am a proponent of the multi-touch keyboard. However I believe it is really only functional if you are touch-typer. It would be a hell of a way to learn to type as your first keyboard...

Yes, one or two digit typing on an iPhone is pretty good. I'm just not convinced that this paradigm would extend very well into a situation where you have 10 fingers trying to find keys that aren't physically there. I prefer to look elsewhere than the keyboard when I type. I don't think I could do that without feeling keys at my fingers. Though I'm happy to leave it up to Apple to prove me wrong.

 

[imacdaddy]

gosh...is April fools happening earlier again this year? This is getting tiresome.

Don't kids nowadays have any homework/studying to do? Your photoshop skills need a little work.

Seriously, if Apple were to implement such a large track/touch pad, I doubt very much they would put it where your palms rest. That would mean the pad sensor would need to differentiate a touch input action from resting palms at all times. Wouldn't this drain battery life? If they do come out with such a large pad, would it make more sense to instead move all the keys down to the bottom edge (like the aluminum keyboard) and place the pad above the function/numeric keys. I know it's something we're not use to and out of the norm today, but this is Apple...they think different.

 

[(L)]

I might eat these words later, but...

...when you think about it for half a second, a click-input bar as long as a trackpad would be dysfunctional and downright unnecessary, so we won't be seeing that. That should immediately strike one as just plain wrong.

Now, the next question - multitouch trackpads don't need to be really wide, do they? What do you imagine being able to do with more space that you couldn't already do with the size of previous trackpads? Of course, since you can't look at both that and the screen at the same time, unless the screen indicates where your fingers are all the time, you can't do very precise work. We don't scroll horizontally nearly as much as vertically. Why in the world do people want it freakishly wide? The patent is one thing - form following function is another.

So basically, unless the screen itself is multitouch or indicates where your fingers are (which would be tacky), a trackpad with multitouch won't be all that different from what we have already, except being able to pinch/zoom and such. Multitouch won't be the hottest thing about the ultra-portable unless it's a tablet.

 

[headset]

So I had this idea, I hope this hasn't already been said. I really wanted to do a mock up but was too lazy.

Anyway, I really think the new laptop will, instead of a trackpad, have an iPod/iphone dock. There would be a MacBook pro mini that accepts an iPhone and a MacBook mini that takes the touch. The gun metal on the touch would blend in with the gun metal on the laptop. You could use the iPhone as a modem. You could undock them and use them as media remotes. You could do all kinds of multitouch gestures. It would take advantage of that long rumored "home on my iPod" thing where you could sync your home folder to your iPod, dock with your laptop and all your settings and stuff would be there.

The more I think about it the more I convince myself of it. I mean, why is the touch so thin. Why not make a 160 gb touch. Because it would be too thick for the new MacBook.

Anyway, just my $.02, what do you think?

 

[GfPQqmcRKUvP]

So I had this idea, I hope this hasn't already been said. I really wanted to do a mock up but was too lazy.

Anyway, I really think the new laptop will, instead of a trackpad, have an iPod/iphone dock. There would be a MacBook pro mini that accepts an iPhone and a MacBook mini that takes the touch. The gun metal on the touch would blend in with the gun metal on the laptop. You could use the iPhone as a modem. You could undock them and use them as media remotes. You could do all kinds of multitouch gestures. It would take advantage of that long rumored "home on my iPod" thing where you could sync your home folder to your iPod, dock with your laptop and all your settings and stuff would be there.

The more I think about it the more I convince myself of it. I mean, why is the touch so thin. Why not make a 160 gb touch. Because it would be too thick for the new MacBook.

Anyway, just my $.02, what do you think?

I think the chances of this happening is about 0%, BUT I think it is a pretty cool idea. Very interesting actually, but the reality is it probably won't happen.


Here's what I think would be cool and IS practical.

You have a slightly enlarged trackpad that accommodates a lot of gestures. Instead of apple+c to copy you just swipe a "C" quickly on the trackpad. This could be used in a lot of different ways I think and it might be cool. I just want to know what Jeff Han would think of if you gave him a 3 inch by 3 inch multi-touch surface with the goal of improving laptop usability, speed, and productivity. O man...

 

[Full of Win]

How about a 24-karat gold plated macbook pro?
Turns out, they actually make em. Some company will hook u up for about $2500 bucks... (you provide the notebook)

That is the JZ bling version

 

[GfPQqmcRKUvP]

That is the JZ bling version

I came into this thread with the intention of getting away from all the ignorant people in the other thread saying Jay-Z wasn't a talented artist.


But in response, he'd have his encrusted with platinum.

 

[Macinposh]

What exactly is wrong with the current trackpad that needs to be fixed?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

It should read like this:

What exactly is wrong with the current tyrannic regime that needs to be fixed?

It´s impossible to go to the moon!!

Nooo!!! Let´s stay here in the trees, it´s safe here!!!

I wont go to the dry land, I like it here in the sea,
if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Things evolve.



But what I find intresting is what kind of benefits will it add?

In some programs,say iPhoto it might be helpfull in resising images,but what about in the normal OS? What about pro apps like Photoshop or FCP?
Are they gonna be usefull at all or evolve the programs to a new direction?
Or is the trackpad gonna develope a full body carpal tunnel syndrome for the user?
Intresting.

 

[iJesus]

Ultraportable+touchscreen+tactile feedback=

... Here's a clue for you...

... Think cellphone ;-)

Not getting it?

take your iPhone, put it in landscape, make the screen 4x bigger= 12"?
now, were not going to mess with widescreen, we'll do fullscreen.
At a boy, now you have a nice 12" fullscreen multitouch laptop where the keyboard is proportionate to the screen so that the actual workspace is in a widescreen format and the touch keyboard takes up the rest of the space of the fullscreen surface.

"oh hey?! Need some tactile response? Slide the top half of your screen forward and tilt the multitouch display up!"

Voilà! A REAL keyboard with a REAL trackpad on top!

Don't get it yet?
I'll make a mockup drawing tommorrow when I get up

(posted on my iPhone, reason for the runon sentences

 

[bbrosemer]

iPhone

Did we not learn from the iphone that whatever we can think of generally will not end up being as good as the real product. Leaving us to say I didn't know I needed that but now I love it. The iPhone does what many other phones cant do and that just is work simply and elegantly. Some may say the ability for third party apps is limited right now but that will come soon enough, just look at it this way... Verizon may get good service but they have some of the worst software interfaces I have ever used on a phone. This MacUltra Light will be smaller, prettier, more useful, and more advanced then any other consumer device we have seen. If it can not do all of this straight out of MacWorld give it a few revisions and everyone will want one to complete their Mac line-up.

 

[Masquerade]

I love how people always try to make up what things that Apple is going to introduce look like. This is why Apple is great. They come up with way better ideas that none of us could ever think of and we love them.

ibooks gets a handle in 1999 and a white body in 2001; a magsafi connector at 2005.
powerbook gets titanium body in 2000, then in 2003 aluminium and the magsafi connection somewhere too..


they redesigned the power adapter about 3 times.
i love apple ideas!!.

 

[skwoytek]

When thinking about the on screen keyboards remember that Apple has filed a patent under the title "Keystroke tacility arrangement on a smooth touch surface,” for a method of physically altering the screen surface to increase tactile feedback. Perhaps dropping the keys to the new Apple style keyboards was their way of preparing us for even shallower keys... Keys on a touch screen.

Of course, this could always just end up as another unused Apple patent.

 

[Foocha]

Trackpad looks unlikely. Styling should follow iMac

These mockups don't look right to me. It's hard to see what the benefit of such a wide trackpad would be, and I can't help suspecting that the purpose of Apple's patent was just a defensive move to generalise the concepts in the iPhone's touch screen to apply to devices other than phones.

I think that the iMac-style docking station is very likely - an elegant solution to not having an optical drive on board. It also makes it all the more likely that the styling of the new sub-notebook would need to match that of the new iMac. Which leads me to conclude that it would have a glossy black frame around the screen, and a white plastic keyboard on an aluminium base.

For what it's worth, before Apple adds insanely large trackpads, I'd love them to add a right-click button (or a right-area on the single button) - we have it on the Mighty Mouse now, so why not on the MacBook?

 

[Patchwork]

What do you suppose the thing all the way to the left in the first picture is?

It looks like the edge of the keyboard from Logitech's S530 cordless desktop package, so not part of the mockup.

 

[sparks9]

So I had this idea, I hope this hasn't already been said. I really wanted to do a mock up but was too lazy.

Anyway, I really think the new laptop will, instead of a trackpad, have an iPod/iphone dock. There would be a MacBook pro mini that accepts an iPhone and a MacBook mini that takes the touch. The gun metal on the touch would blend in with the gun metal on the laptop. You could use the iPhone as a modem. You could undock them and use them as media remotes. You could do all kinds of multitouch gestures. It would take advantage of that long rumored "home on my iPod" thing where you could sync your home folder to your iPod, dock with your laptop and all your settings and stuff would be there.

The more I think about it the more I convince myself of it. I mean, why is the touch so thin. Why not make a 160 gb touch. Because it would be too thick for the new MacBook.

Anyway, just my $.02, what do you think?

No

 

[EdDek]

ThinBook + OLED keyboard = ???

I haven't read the complete thread, so this might have been brought up before...

How about a thin laptop - as shown in the mock-ups here - with an additional touchpad/keyboard/whatever screen. Think Ninentedo DS. Could be used as a drawing pad, switched to keyboard like iPhone does.
Using an OLED screen under a transparent touch pad might do the trick.

 

[coolant113]

i dont like the idea of the multi touch trackpad.. i dont understand the benefit of it and what it does??

 

[philoscoffee]

Visual trackpad?

Funny, I was going to suggest the exact same thing: a iPhone sized multi-touch screen in place of the normal trackpad. As a minimum, the additional display would show visual hints to help users learn specific multi-touch gestures for cut, paste, rotate, zoom, etc., but could have some other novel user interface applications... (Probably just wild speculation, but it's an interesting idea!)

What I suspect we'll really see is a regular sized multi-touch trackpad with zoom, rotate and multi-select facilities, which will hopefully be rolled out through the whole laptop range by the middle of next year in preparation for true touch screen display based Macs.

 

[EdDek]

i dont like the idea of the multi touch trackpad.. i dont understand the benefit of it and what it does??

I didn't either until I used two-finger scrolling. Now I'm hooked. Same goes for scaling gestures on iPhone/iPod touch.

 

[koobcamuk]

I would have to see a demo before being sold on it.

You mean like when Apple said they were releasing a phone with only 1 (or three) button(s)?

 

[sushi]

This image shows a mockup of what a thin MacBook might look like complete with a large area for a multi-touch trackpad.

This one makes sense to me.

As for the long trackpad, I am sure the user will have options. For example, those who need the full space to do touch type features, can have it set to ignore palm pressure that would occur if your hands were resting on it. Likewise if you were only going to type, why not have an option turning off the outer portions of the trackpad that would be under your hands? The option could be activated by a key sequence or menu option.

Kind of like having the best of both worlds at the same time.

 

[matthewHUB]

ok so maybe this is an insane idea....

but what if there was *no* trackpad visible? i mean, the entire bottom portion of the front could be 'touchable', and it wouldn't even need any buttons, as it could sense when you're going to click, or double click by having two fingers on the pad and tapping with the thumb.

crazy? or would it just elliminate a whole load of clutter?

 

[Full of Win]

I came into this thread with the intention of getting away from all the ignorant people in the other thread saying Jay-Z wasn't a talented artist.


But in response, he'd have his encrusted with platinum.

Typically you encrust with jewels and you plate with metals. Oh, and I'm sure Mr. JayZee would only take a MacBook Pro plated with rhodium, since platinum is so 2005.