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Apple Patents Switch-Less Force Touch Keyboard, Could Lead to Thinner Macs

Gudi said:
I know you all want to be funny. But do you understand how sarcasm works?
January 27, 2010 : Apple Releases iPad Tablet, New SDK, iBooks and iWork Apps
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Well, judging from the posts you quoted, I don't think you do.

Regarding what I said, I don't see how the iPad is relevant? They didn't cram one inside a MacBook.

Although it was a bad joke, my point was that I bet Jony Ive would love to ditch the mechanical keyboard and trackpad with an iPad-like surface when it becomes technically and economically feasible, even if the typing experience gets worse. He hates moving parts almost as much as he loves thinness.
 
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This is going to be pretty big when it gets released. LCD keyboards will allow you to have custom interfaces for each app. Big changes possible.
 
Cougarcat said:
I bet Jony Ive would love to ditch the mechanical keyboard and trackpad with an iPad-like surface when it becomes technically and economically feasible, even if the typing experience gets worse.
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Oh yes, he would love it, because he did it five years ago with the iPad. And the typing experience on a virtual keyboard is a lot worse. That's why you can be smart and buy a Smart Keyboard for your iPad Pro to add the mechanical keys back. The iPad-like surface that replaces keyboard and trackpad on a MacBook is called a Touchscreen. And the software that makes a Touchscreen technically feasible is called iOS. That's how a MacBook looks like, when you ditch keyboard and trackpad. You are describing an iPad.
 
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Cuban Missles said:
It is a fact that moving parts have a higher failure rate than non-moving parts. So yeah, getting rid of HDD and moving keys make the computer last longer. But there may be additional benefits,
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Generally, my keyboards outlast my computers.
 
I DONT CARE IF THEY MAKE THE NEXT MACBOOK 2/3 INCH THICK, JUST GIVE IT GREAT BATTERY LIFE....

Seriously, like, who cares about thinness anymore, its not like having a Macbook is better than having a retina Macbook Pro because its thinner...
 
ThunderSkunk said:
They're getting everyone closer and closer to touch typing... eventually they'll get everyone to the point where they can get away with making the base a big iPad with little haptic "bumps" to center your fingertips while typing, and then enable applications to finally have their own control surfaces and move beyond the typewriter UI.

Everyone assumes the touchscreen should go up top like a Surface Book, but it'd be far more useful and ergonomic on the horizontal base.
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I've been waiting for a macbook "DS" for quite some time now :)
 
keysofanxiety said:
Are you trying to give me a Vietnam-style horror flashback?! The lag on those damn things were horrendous. I remember punching the keys, screaming with frustration as they wouldn't accept the characters.

Hmm, maybe Apple are going to do a similar thing.

"To ... create ... this product, we asked ourselves: what do consumers most want from a notebook? The answer, of course, is not more power, or better battery life, but a biblically unreliable keyboard. The user will ... sympathetically press each key, enjoying not only the feel, but the experience, of typing. It's unapologetically laggy.

We, at Apple, feel that life sometimes moves too ... quickly. By ... distilling the user experience, refining the joy of pressing a key, users can once again learn to type. To ... condense the encounter between the finger and the key, our engineers had to start from the beginning -- quite literally.

Put simply, it's the best keyboard we've ever made."

jony-ive-10-20-09.jpg
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Ouch! Jony Ive's ultra-piety has turned him into a joke.
 
gaximus said:
Green has nothing to do with how easy it is to repair, two separate issues. Spending lots of money to fix something makes it no less green.
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Still don't get how adhesives and proprietary batteries make devices less green?

It means that a LOT of folks will - instead of getting it fixed themselves (ever replaced a hard drive on a modern iMac for example? Have fun, mate!) or forking over cash for the repair, buy a new one, which of course is in no way in Apple's interest, right? Right?

Batteries, hard drives, RAM, ...

All parts that are typically, or were, the user serviceable parts of a Mac, even during times of proprietary GPUs and IBM processors.
You always could keep a Mac alive by replacing parts that fail one day or another or upgrade RAM, whenever you felt that the machine had to grow with your needs.

Nowadays it's all about trading in, buying new, obscene out-of-warranty costs from the oh so great Apple Support.
Don't get me wrong, out-of-warranty support is always expensive, but it's interesting that more and more they make this almost a forced way to fix your machine.
I am savvy, I know how to replace my iMac's HDD with an SSD, but it's stupid I'll have to buy an aftermarket kit to accomplish that or live with full-throttle fans for the rest of this computer's life, because for some goddamn reason the temperature sensor needed to be IN the hard drive.


When I talked about adhesives, I only really mentioned a small fraction of their anti-customer moves in terms of keeping their devices alive.


And yes, more money needed to fix a device is an anti-green move, they know oh too well that a customer will never pay a grand for fixing a years old computer that would otherwise still do its job just fine.
So there comes the new purchase, more expensive than fixing, but more economical after the fact.

If you still believe Apple's motivations have greenness as a motive before any other, I'm sorry, that doesn't compute.

Glassed Silver:mac
 
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How come I'm still a newbie… when I approaching my tenth birthday on this forum???
 
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Glassed Silver said:
Still don't get how adhesives and proprietary batteries make devices less green?

It means that a LOT of folks will - instead of getting it fixed themselves (ever replaced a hard drive on a modern iMac for example? Have fun, mate!) or forking over cash for the repair, buy a new one, which of course is in no way in Apple's interest, right? Right?

Batteries, hard drives, RAM, ...

All parts that are typically, or were, the user serviceable parts of a Mac, even during times of proprietary GPUs and IBM processors.
You always could keep a Mac alive by replacing parts that fail one day or another or upgrade RAM, whenever you felt that the machine had to grow with your needs.

Nowadays it's all about trading in, buying new, obscene out-of-warranty costs from the oh so great Apple Support.
Don't get me wrong, out-of-warranty support is always expensive, but it's interesting that more and more they make this almost a forced way to fix your machine.
I am savvy, I know how to replace my iMac's HDD with an SSD, but it's stupid I'll have to buy an aftermarket kit to accomplish that or live with full-throttle fans for the rest of this computer's life, because for some goddamn reason the temperature sensor needed to be IN the hard drive.


When I talked about adhesives, I only really mentioned a small fraction of their anti-customer moves in terms of keeping their devices alive.


And yes, more money needed to fix a device is an anti-green move, they know oh too well that a customer will never pay a grand for fixing a years old computer that would otherwise still do its job just fine.
So there comes the new purchase, more expensive than fixing, but more economical after the fact.

If you still believe Apple's motivations have greenness as a motive before any other, I'm sorry, that doesn't compute.

Glassed Silver:mac
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I didn't say Apple's motives are to be more green, I said that being more expensive to repair has nothing to do with how green an item is. If item A is 100% biodegradable, but costs $10,000 to replace a battery, and item B is 100% biodegradable, and only cost $1 to replace the battery, then they are both have the same 'greenness'. The cost of repair has nothing to do with how green it is.
 
Say goodbye to HDMI and USB ports.
Oh but don't worry, you can swap out your display and storage drives to the USB-C drive, which also charges the notebook.
If the MacBook 12" is any indication of the trend we are going to be drifting towards, even with the "Pro" line, then say goodbye to ground shattering performance. We can just use an Intel processor that's slower than a 2011 MacBook Air, as long as our device is super thin, incredibly thin and very innovative.
I feel sorry for people who bought the 12" MacBook and use it for anything other than being on this forum or responding to emails. You dumped $1300 into a device that's slower than your iPad. Congratulations lol.
 
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gaximus said:
I didn't say Apple's motives are to be more green, I said that being more expensive to repair has nothing to do with how green an item is. If item A is 100% biodegradable, but costs $10,000 to replace a battery, and item B is 100% biodegradable, and only cost $1 to replace the battery, then they are both have the same 'greenness'. The cost of repair has nothing to do with how green it is.
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The very materials themselves might be as green as the other, but if you believe that that's it to greenness, you are mislead, because nothing in computers these days is as degradable we have to find ways to make most efficient use of what non-degrabdable materials we have.

Prolonging a computers life is a lot more green than recycling it too early.
Supporting customers to take that path is a green move, letting people act green themselves should be considered a proper design feature just as much as making this week's model of product X 1mm thinner again. (and in fact, I think it should take precedence over Apple's anorexia trip)

Glassed Silver:mac
 
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melendezest said:
I'll remain on my 2011 17" and 2012 15" cMBPs for those reasons and because I need both real internal storage, connectivity, and the ability to switch out both the HDD/SSDs and RAM at will.

F the cloud. I feel that lately Apple is constantly moving towards a Chromebook.
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Yup. When I see the word "cloud" in any Apple product, I stay away. It's why I pay Dropbox $100/year. Since I've had .mac, they have simply sucked at cloud services. I DO NOT want touch screens on my MBP, nor do I want 4k/8k screens, I want ports, I would like to be able to upgrade *something* under the hood, I don't want a watered down iOS like experience on my desktop OS. You know, things I always assumed would hold true when I bought an Apple computer.
 
If they make the keyboard too thin, and rely on less mechanical mechanisms... at some point isn't it going to be like typing on a touch screen? That's kind of one of the appeals of a laptop with an actual keyboard, it's generally a lot easier to type on. This is interesting enough though.
 
You know what I like? I like a traditional laptop. I like a nice big trackpad so I don't have to swipe my finger across it ten times to move the mouse, a midsize screen (13"), a computer that's portable and reasonably thin but not so thin I'm afraid I'll break it, a computer with a long battery, a computer that doesn't get too hot, and I like keys that give me feedback when I hit them.

Some of these things are preference- screen size is, for the most part (I think most people would agree that bigger is better until it gets unwieldy), and I guess you could argue thickness (or thinness, as Apple would say), is important to some and not to others.

But some of these things are the way they are because it makes more sense with the device's function. Keys clicking down lets you know that you actually hit the key. A bigger trackpad is better than a smaller one for the reason I described, that it allows for easier navigation (and is one of the biggest things I love about MacBooks over Windows laptops- almost all of them have tiny trackpads for no obvious reason). Longer battery life is always, unquestionably, better, and a computer that circulates heat properly when you throw something intense at it is obviously better for both your lap and the computer's internals.

Funny enough, all of these things apply to the current MacBook Pro lineup, more or less, which is why they're the best laptops Apple makes (as in, even if they weren't more powerful than the Air or the new MacBook, I'd argue that they're better computers). Their ventilation system along the sides of the computer is actually pretty ingenious. They have a fantastic keyboard, a design that's thin but sturdy, and you're not compromising much on battery. Even if you want to argue based on looks, I would say the Pro's black bezel is far superior to the Air's thick silver one. I like the Space Gray MacBook for its color, but the Pro's keyboard far outclasses it, butterfly mechanism or not.

I get that Apple is looking to push new features and make better computers. I applaud them for it rather than being complacent in their place as "most profitable company in the universe" (admittedly, they seem a little complacent at times, but given their market position, I think they could be doing much worse). But there's a point where functionality outweighs throwing in new features to make a device thinner.

How about keep the MacBook Pro Retina design for a couple years while batteries and processors and such improve, until you have 24 hour battery life (literally "all-day") despite a sharper screen and better performance. I think the jump from the old Pro to the Retina Pro was a great one, but you're starting to lose functionality past here in the name of making a computer weigh as much as a piece of paper.

Honestly, if Apple's entire computer line becomes like the new MacBook, I'll probably try a Surface Book.
 
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