From MacBook Touch Bar to Touch Keyboard: will Apple ever ditch physical keys?

Source: Gerald Lynch / iMore

There’s always a new MacBook on the horizon, even after two new ones have just been announced. A recently published Apple patent suggests one of those future MacBooks could borrow something from the product line’s past in a potentially game-changing new way. The patent for a “Device having integrated interface system” mentions a feature that sounds a lot like Touch Bar on steroids. If correct, the introduction of the new feature would represent a considerable about-face by the folks at Apple.

The new Apple patent, dated June 21, shows the company could be working on a MacBook with a dual-display and built-in wireless iPhone charger. Among the goodies this possible laptop may include is a “second display (that) may be configured to display an image of a keyboard in a keyboard region of the top case.” In other words, the MacBook’s physical keyboard could one day get replaced by a digital one.

In 2016, Apple revealed the Touch Bar on select MacBook Pro models. Once considered a “breakthrough interface” by Apple, the Retina-quality multitouch display replaced the traditional row of function keys above the laptop’s physical keyboard. With Touch Bar, users could use digital controls that changed as one moved between native- and third-party apps. Although Apple eventually added Touch Bar to its entire MacBook Pro lineup between 2017 and 2020, it never showed the feature much love or offered it software updates. Finally, when the 2021 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models were announced late last year, Touch Bar was no longer an option.

Many of us loved Touch Bar and were unhappy to see it go. And yet, we accepted it because of all the great features that arrived on the current generation MacBook Pro models, including the recently announced MacBook Air (2022). Today’s patent publication and the introduction of another 13-inch MacBook Pro, which still includes a Touch Bar, suggests that Apple hasn’t completely shut the door on multitouch on the MacBook lineup.

Until those same 2021 MacBook Pro models were announced, Apple had long ago retired the MagSafe charging port option on its laptops. Today, the popular feature is alive and well on the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros and MacBook Air (2022). Therefore, it’s entirely possible Touch Bar could morph into “Touch Keyboard” someday.

I’m not optimistic, however. Bringing online a MacBook keyboard that’s entirely digital sounds like a huge undertaking and one that comes with huge risks. As the now-buried butterfly keyboard showed us, MacBook users are demanding and don’t like changes, even minor ones, when it comes to keyboards. So a full-on digital keyboard would have to work as promised and not radically change how typing works.

Is that even possible? Touch Bar only replaced a few seldom-used function keys; I can’t imagine the uproar that would likely occur if Apple replaced all of the physical keys with a touchscreen display. Besides, who will clean off the smudge marks that will no doubt happen with each digital keyboard?

Patents don’t mean much

Apple patents don’t necessarily lead to new consumer products. So most likely, its newest one won’t see the light of day as an actual product. However, if Apple does have plans for a digital keyboard on Macs, I’m pretty sure we’ll see them arrive first for non-Apple devices. Only after a lot of testing would Apple consider releasing a digital keyboard to call its own.