Do you remember the ThinkPad, the laptop that drowned between the keys of the keyboard had that curious red dot called Trackpoint that acted in the place of a mouse? Well, thirty years have passed since that lucky PC, which, precisely because of the brilliant idea of that sort of “built-in mouse”, had a resounding success.
Apple, today, is thinking of something similar, however completely different. Allow us the pun, which we try to explain. In Cupertino, in short, they are trying to understand how to equip the MacBook Pro with an “internal” mouse and among the solutions under development there is one that is suggestive to say the least, according to which a key on the keyboard would be removable to become a small mouse in all respects.
The Deployable Key Mouse, as defined in the patent, is a sign that this technology is taken quite seriously. The idea of the mouse inserted inside a button that can be pulled out came to Paul X. Wang, the prolific inventor of Apple who is responsible, among other things, for the patent on the curved glass iMac. But let’s not digress. “The removable mouse – the patent reads – it may have a position sensor, so that it can be used as a computer pointing device“.
Apple knows that the idea of the mouse embedded in a key on the keyboard of its MacBooks of the future will only follow if it gives users a real advantage. The patent application reads:
Over the years, the mouse has undergone a number of innovations, including the addition of a right and a left button, a scroll wheel, an optical sensor, and a sensor for wireless communication with the computer. On laptops and tablets, you benefit from using an external peripheral such as a mouse, which however forces you to carry separate hardware with you. The idea is to make this external device redundant and to rely on an integrated pointing device.
The integrated and removable mouse it will not replace the trackpad, but it will represent an additional opportunity for users who have to carry out special operations. Indeed, maybe it will be integrated with it, coming to define new gestures that for now we do not yet know.
Curiosity rises, but there are still many problems to be solved. The mouse in question, although very small, being independent from the PC, must be equipped with a battery and integrated communication systems. Not only that, it must be ergonomically functional: if there is one thing that has changed little over the years, it is the size of the peripheral that we all know.
