Blog
I'm writing this blogpost with my brand new Magic Trackpad next to my 13 inch MacBook. I received the Magic Trackpad this morning and decided to give it a thorough test in the following days to see if it could replace my Magic Mouse. So far, things are looking good.
I've had some experience with pad-like input devices and have tried a series of them when I did software development for Windows tablet pc's. Don't ask. They were always stylus based and the fact that you had to put the stylus down and pick it up again when switching to and from the keyboard made them tedious to use. They kept me interested for mere hours, if that.
The Magic Trackpad, of course, is finger based, so no problems when switching to and from the keyboard. The feel of the surface is exactly the same as the trackpads on modern unibody MacBook Pro's. There's little or no learning curve.
Now, there's a few things that have always intrigued me on the aforementioned unibody MacBook Pro's. One of them is the little glowing light at the front, that fades in and out continuously when you close the screen. Another one is the indicator on the side that shows how much battery life you have left. In both cases these lights are almost invisible.
This morning, when I pressed the power button on the Magic Trackpad and tried to pair it with my MacBook Pro, I couldn't tell if the Magic Trackpad was on or off. Only now have I discovered that there is a little green light that lights up when turning it on and blinks while pairing.
The reason why I didn't see it before is because it's almost invisible to the naked eye, again.
This got me thinking about possible future uses for combination of touch surface with invisible lights built in. If you're into iPhone development, then you know you can present different types of keyboards for users depending on what sort of input you're expecting. If you expect a numeric value, you present a numeric keyboard. There's also a keyboard that's suited for input of mail addresses and of course, the full-blown keyboard for general input.
This got me thinking ... what if you removed the physical keyboard with the black buttons from MacBook Pro's and replaced the entire area with a touch surface with (let me call them invisible) lights built-in ?
There's a series of very interesting advantages to this approach.
First of all: laptops could be made either thinner, or could keep the same thickness with more room for battery. This could increase battery life even further.
Second: similar to the iPhone SDK, OSX programs could present whatever keyboards they wanted. Developers could literally choose what keyboard to present in this flat surface depending on what context their program is in.
Third: manufacturing costs would come down. No different keyboards for different countries needed anymore, as keyboard layout would be controlled by software.
What if no keyboard is needed ? You could make the entire area one giant trackpad.
What if no keys are needed but the user would be better off choosing options from a list of custom icons ? Just light them up on the surface.
Now, this might sound far-fetched but most of this technology exists today. It is right in front of our very eyes. These touch surfaces exist in the form of trackpads in our MacBook Pro's and our Magic Trackpads. These "invisible" lights exist in the same products. The technology behind context-dependent keyboards exists in the iPhone SDK.
It would also be a typical Apple "invention". It's something that's been tried before but has never been done right. Apple could jump right in and do it proper from day one.
Now, what device would benefit from such a technology showcase ? Well, what about the MacBook Air ? It's long overdue for an update and it could be made even thinner. It isn't a product that is sold as much as MacBook Pro's. Therefor it could serve as a very nice base for testing this technology.
My prediction is that we'll see an Apple device running this type of keyboard in the coming years.
We already have the Magic Mouse, now we have the Magic Trackpad.
What about a Magic Keyboard ?
