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Thin MacBook Laptop Concept Images

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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With Macworld approaching, many concept designs are circulating to demonstrate how Apple might design the upcoming "thin" notebook. Our multitouch article generated a long discussion with a number of unofficial mockups posted. The most attractive, perhaps, is this image posted by kontheur:


macbook_nano_300.jpg


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

An image that has already seen wide circulation is this one posted by greenrabbit which preserves the MacBook Pro's aluminum casing:


maifjaabk_300.jpg


Both images introduce a wide touchpad which is derived from an earlier Apple patent. In 2006, Apple described implementing a wide trackpad and provided the following rendition:

touchpad_300.png


Apple describes its functionality as follows:
"the wide touchpad may be a cursor control device having the capabilities of conventional computer mouse devices, such as the ability to point, drag, tap and double tap objects on a graphical user interface, as well as more general purposes such as scrolling, panning, zooming, and rotating images on display screen."
Click to expand...
Other design concepts that have been circulating include:












Article Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2008/01/05/thin-macbook-laptop-concept-images/
A trackpad that long does seem pointless. How are you supposed to type on it.
 
The Popular Mechanics mockup, erm, now that's odd (and not going to happen).
 
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. :D
 
Three of the images have long track pads. The issue with a long track pad is that there is nowhere to rest your hands. Most people rest their hands on the sides of the noteboook, and with a long track pad there would too much accidental input. I don't think Apple will be going with a lock track pad because of that. I guess we'll have to see what happens on Jan. 15.

Edit - Just saw arn's post. I'm going to take a look at the patent, I'm curious to see how that would happen.
 
Is the first image see through? Towards the top left corner? And it looks like a part of the bed pattern might be seen through it?
 
I like those last few images, but doubt we'll see anything like that on the 15th.

Might be all the gloss that's attracting me to them.
 
I kind of like the idea about the trackpad, but it does have some niggling issues. If its much wider than the current trackpads then wont it be somewhat inconsistent? The current trackpads resemble the screensize/aspect ratio vaguely. The wider one would be much wider. Surely this would mean the x-axis would be much less sensitive than the y-axis? This could possibly confuse a lot of people when you use it for the first time.

But still, we'll have to wait and see. Apple have something of a knack for pulling off stunts that work well like this :D I'll wait till I've used one to judge it.
 
I could see the Applesfera one happening. You'd have to lose the standard hardware keyboard though because you wouldn't be able to type on it with that trackpad. I think the trackpad could be that wide but also deeper (towards the screen) with a keyboard that shows up in the trackpad and that's how you type. Similar to the iPhone, the keyboard would show up in the trackpad only when needed.





;)
 
So, smaller in all 3 dimensions than current models? I say just look at your current Apple laptop, and then back off about 10 feet. Look at how small it is now!
 
HALTAH said:
Wouldn't it be so incredible if you were able to write with a stylus of some sort across a wide trackpad!!!
Click to expand...

no not really. i mean jobs expressed so much love for the stylus when launching the iphone...
 
poppe said:
Is the first image see through? Towards the top left corner? And it looks like a part of the bed pattern might be seen through it?
Click to expand...

I really don't think they are making a transparent Macbook, but that would be pretty sweet. =D
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A110a Safari/419.3)

Wait a second!

These weren't taken in an elevator.

Fake.
 
arn said:
the patent went into detail about how it would ignore palm contact

arn
Click to expand...

I just read the patent summary (well, part of it) linked from MR to macsimumnews.com and I'm convinced that an extra wide track pad could be used. The only issue I see now, is getting it to blend in to the casing a "regular" track pad. I don't think a long gray strip will be that aesthetically pleasing.

Edit - I just searched MR and found it. Thanks though. :)
 
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