What if Apple tipped their hand on an upcoming Mac keyboard?
It just occurred to me as I think about just how huge the iOS 9 update for iPad will be, that the virtual trackpad for text selection may be a preview of what’s to come for Apple’s keyboard technology.
Hidden in plain sight
iOS 9 debuts an innovative new interaction method for the iPad: use two fingers to scroll a cursor around a document. It makes text editing on the iPad infinitely easier than it is today and frankly got me really excited. But I wonder in all of this, if they just demoed where they’d like to take the next evolution of physical keyboards — on desktops and laptops alike.
What if you just had a piece of glass representing your keyboard? What if there were no physical trackpad anymore, but it’s just all one slate? As a touch-typer I’ve never had a problem with the iPad’s on-screen keyboard and can frankly type a lot faster on glass than I can with physical keys. So long as there’s strong intention recognition technology on the receiving end, it’s probably safe to assume that a virtual keyboard could address possible errors easier than physical ones.
Already we’ve seen Apple trying to dramatically reduce the amount of vertical movement a keyboard key needs to make so as to make a device even thinner, that’s what they did in the new MacBook. So the next logical step is to remove the physical movement altogether and replace it with another screen. I’d argue that the only thing holding this back from being done right now is battery technology — it would take some work to have another physical screen with multitouch. Though what if it were e-ink? Now that would be pretty slick…
