MacBook with OLED Keyboard Shown in New Patent

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Apple has been granted a patent for "dual display equipment with enchanted visibility and suppressed reflections," and the illustration looks like a MacBook with a giant Touch Bar for a keyboard. Patently Apple first discovered the patent. 

The Touch Bar first appeared on MacBook Pros in 2016, and reception to the feature was mixed.

The patent suggests two ways a Touch Bar-style keyboard could be implemented: as a giant OLED display where the keyboard goes on a laptop, or as a peripheral you could attach to another device, like an iPad or as a detachable 2-in-1. Additionally, the document mentions that polarizers could keep the screens from reflecting each other, which could be extremely distracting on a device with so many reflective surfaces.

Since this is in the patent stage, don't expect to see this on hardware in an Apple Store anytime soon. What's more the Touch Bar has received a pretty muddled reception since its arrival. While it looks cool, it hasn't proved useful in many apps, and some have found the Touch Bar to be more of a gimmick than a useful addition to Apple's laptops.

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Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew is a contributing writer at Laptop Mag. His main focus lies in helpful how-to guides and laptop reviews, including Asus, Microsoft Surface, Samsung Chromebook, and Dell. He has also dabbled in peripherals, including webcams and docking stations. His work has also appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, PCMag, Kotaku, and Complex. He fondly remembers his first computer: a Gateway that still lives in a spare room in his parents' home, albeit without an internet connection. When he’s not writing about tech, you can find him playing video games, checking social media and waiting for the next Marvel movie.