Future Apple keyboards may have a key that pops out and functions as a mouse

Apple is continuing to work on how to take out a key from the MacBook Pro keyboard and use it as a precision mouse.

A "deployable keyboard and mouse" is a newly disclosed patent application, but Apple must take the idea seriously as it was previously granted a nearly identical patent in March 2022.

The patent granted bears the same name, though, and the app sounds less like Apple's typical futuristic plans and more like a throwback to the pre-trackpad days of the 1980s.

PC users can place their mouse on the side of their laptop and have a hard time using these very unergonomic devices.

Apple has certainly explored every possible keyboard design, but a newly revealed patent application details one very peculiar application. Prolific Apple inventor Paul X. Wang, whose previous work included plans for a glass keyboard, proposed a removable mouse.

The patent application proposes that a regular keyboard, such as the one on a MacBook Pro, could have a special key that is removable. Pick up that shift key—or perhaps the newer "global" key on the iPad Magic Keyboard—and your mouse is there.

This is your very, very small mouse.

"The detachable key may have a position sensor," the patent application states, "[so that it] can be operated as a computer pointing device...Thus, the detachable key structure may provide comfort for computer input , portable and precise pointer input system."

Granted, you can move the keys/mouse around the table and control the cursor more precisely. But judging from the patent application drawings, this will be smaller and bulkier than Apple's infamous hockey mouse.

Apple’s patent application talks about how the company popularized the mouse in the 1980s.

"Over the next few years, the computer mouse underwent a series of innovations, including the addition of left and right buttons, a scroll wheel, optical sensors, trackball sensors, laser sensors, and wireless communications. Host," it continued.

"In some cases, portable computing devices, such as laptops and tablets, benefit from the use of peripheral mouse input devices," Apple said. "However, users would be burdened with carrying a separate mouse with their computer, and a separate device may be redundant when the computer already has a built-in pointing device."

So the purpose here is not to replace the trackpad , instead offering an optional mouse when finer control than finger control is required. While the app doesn't go into detail about its uses and benefits, you can imagine a Photoshop user occasionally needing really precise image editing.

The patent covers how physical keys work both inside and outside of a keyboard. In it, the keys must react and respond like any other key on the keyboard.

Then when it's removed, it has to have this position sensing capability. Plus being removed from a MacBook Pro or other device, it would have to have its own circuitry and battery.

It has to do this while being a very, very small mouse.

"Mouse are often ergonomically shaped to fit comfortably in the hand," the app says, describing how pointing devices have evolved over the years. "This is one of the factors that keeps its size relatively stable."

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