Apple is about to announce some new laptops. This could either be very boring, or very exciting, depending on whether it’s time for Apple to make another great leap forward.
In advance, I thought I would throw out some possibilities of how a great leap forward might look.
The entire computer is in the display portion of the laptop. Is detachable from the keyboard section. The tablet functions as a stand-alone tablet computer for mobile use: an iPhone, but bigger. The tablet weighs less than the MacBook Air. It has the same capacitive touchscreen as the iPhone, and a similar on-screen keyboard when needed. It is transported with a protective shell/cover (which is also a keyboard). The tablet operates in landscape or portrait mode. A stylus is tucked away for sketching and painting. The tablet section can be plugged in for power.
For desk use, there is a “kickstand” built in to the back of the tablet, possibly hinging open in both portrait or landscape (Apple is more likely to commit to just one, landscape). Mouse and keyboard operate via Bluetooth. There is only one wire involved, the power cable to the tablet. To use it on your desk, you just have to stand it up, plug it in for power and start typing and mousing.
(Sooner or later we will have wireless connections to displays. In this scenario, you can come to your desk, stand the tablet up and plug in or dock it, and then start computing away on your 30 inch monitor, keyboard, and mouse.)
For heavy duty computing, the tablet can be docked to the keyboard section at the hinge. The keyboard section resembles the bottom of traditional laptop. It includes a complement of ports for desktop use. The keyboard section also includes a second battery to extend the charge, and to cantilever the top-heavy display. (Hopefully this would mean that the keyboard section could support the weight of the display, for airplane use.) The two sections close like a regular laptop.
In an alternate embodiment, the keyboard section is thin and lightweight, and serves as a cover to the tablet for transport. The tablet has minimum traditional ports, but it does have a fat docking connector. For desktop use, the tablet is is docked into a hinged stand that provides power and a communication bus. Peripheral ports are on the dock. The docs may or may not include the keyboard and touchpad.
The tablet portion may alternately be laid flat to use as a graphics tablet with a display behind it. Great for designers or artists.
I don’t know if the mechanical or technological challenges of this approach are yet achievable, but let’s see what tomorrow brings, shall we?
They finally did it. They took away that final button.
Will the keyboard go next?
I don’t need a clamshell laptop, they are no good for graphics work anyway as the screen is always too small. What I need is a rugged, waterproof, keyboard with a very long-lasting battery. It would have a narrow single-line “display-strip”, that went the full width of the keyboard.
The UI would be textual, just a simple word processor. It would only do graphics, etc. when connected wirelessly to a workstation and its monitor (i.e. it would have no power-hungry GPU itself). A separate pointing device would be used, which would be found at the site of the workstation! So no trackpad would be needed.
Hence you could take this “use immediately” without having to open it up ‘Notebook’ word processor, where any key press would wake it from sleep (there would be no ON/OFF) and put that character onto the display-line at the cursor position – i.e. it wouldn’t “eat” your information and would be always ready.
The keyboard would be backlit with an ambient light sensor and the display line would probably be white on black characters to reduce intrusion within conferences – as the other way is like having a small torch shining out; this is an important point as it would not be angled inwards towards the user and simultaneously shielded from the “speaker on stage”, only annoying those seated behind you, in the manner of a normal laptop.
There would be no removable storage, discs or USB ports.
The display-line would have an always central cursor and the text would be entered as one continual line with paragraphs marked by the Pilcrow sign and § for sections etc. However, META keys would allow rapid traversal of this “long string” that represented the text document allowing you to jump back and forth between sections and paragraphs although there would be NO up/down traversal of lines as there was NO word wrap.
The keyboard would be as dinky as this Apple one:
http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB167B/A?fnode=MTY1NDA1Mg&mco=MjMwMjI4MA
but with the display line, it would look more like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/CambridgeZ88.jpg
only with fewer lines in its embedded display, or this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/GBS-Newbrain-AD-2.jpg
with a wider embedded display that can be seen in the dark.
And yes, anyone can steal this idea of mine as I am not in the position of building my own hardware!
I would like to say, excellent page. Im not sure if it has been talked about, but when using Chrome I can never get the entire page to load without refreshing several times. Could just be my connection. Enjoy!