One of my favorite Apple inventions covers a cool all-dark-glass iMac. Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a patent application from Apple that relates to a future MacBook with a metal frame with a glass top where the keyboard rests and a glass back. More importantly perhaps, is that Apple points to this future MacBook coming with a touch screen!

A laptop computer may include a base portion including a keyboard, and a display portion flexibly coupled to the base portion. The display portion may include a housing component formed of metal and defining a set of side surfaces, a front cover assembly coupled to the housing component and including a first glass member defining at least a portion of a front exterior surface of the display portion, and a display coupled to the first glass member, and a rear cover assembly coupled to the housing component and including a second glass member defining at least a portion of a rear exterior surface of the display portion.

The first glass member may define a first portion of the front exterior surface of the display portion, and the housing component may define a second portion of the front exterior surface of the display portion. The second glass member may define a first portion of the rear exterior surface of the display portion, and the housing component may define a second portion of the rear exterior surface of the display portion.

The rear cover assembly may further include an opaque mask structure coupled to an interior surface of the second glass member. The set of side surfaces defined by the housing component may include a first side surface, a second side surface, a third side surface, a first corner surface extending from the first side surface to the second side surface, and a second corner surface extending from the second side surface to the third side surface. The laptop computer may further include a touch-sensing layer positioned between the display and the first glass member.

The display portion includes a display, which may be a touch- and/or force-sensitive display, and may include a camera for capturing images (e.g., still or video images) of a user, such as for videoconferencing purposes.

While the keyboard may be a traditional mechanical keyboard, the patent also support the possibility of using a virtual keyboard, such as a keyboard that is displayed on a touch-sensitive input surface (e.g., a touch-screen).

In some cases, such as patent FIG. 1A below, the display #103 includes components of a touch-sensing system to facilitate the detection of touch inputs. In some cases, the display may have an integrated (on-cell) touch-sensing system. For example, an array of electrodes (or other touch-sensing components) that are integrated into the display may be time and/or frequency multiplexed in order to provide both display and touch-sensing functionality.

In addition, the electrodes may be configured to detect a location of a touch, a gesture input, multi-touch input, or other types of touch input along the external surface of the front cover #122.

Other types of touch-sensing systems may also be used, and may be integrated into or part of the display #103.

For full details, review Apple's patent application 20240094765.  The lead inventor listed on the patent is Mike Leclerc: Senior Product Design Engineer, Advanced Architecture.

Back in October 2022, Joanna Stern from the WSJ asked Apple executives: "Will there ever be a touch screen on a Mac?" Craig Federighi answered, ever so thoughtfully, "Who's to say." That question posed in the past was always met with a straight in-your-face No. So, there's still hope considering that today's patent clearly spells it out. Here's to hoping that the project gets a green light.

Side Note: Our cover graphic is a line drawing from: SVG Repo