To balance its systemic need for thinness against its customers’ need for something they can actually type on, Apple is researching a keyboard that can fully retract into a MacBook Pro enclosure.
Apple has been careful to not say that the butterfly keyboard is gone, but that turns out to be more than because the lawyers tell it to. It’s true that if Apple ever actually said it was rubbish, there would be a cascade of lawsuits over it selling a keyboard that it knew didn’t work. But it looks as if Apple is also simply not willing to give up this fight for a thin keyboard yet.
“Retractable Keyboards,” US Patent Application number 20200201399, suggests that while Apple may move away from the specifics of its keyboard, it’s looking to take some inspiration from IBM’s old butterfly keyboard.
That wasn’t a butterfly one in the sense that Apple’s was. With Apple, the butterfly description was to do with the way each key was mounted on the keyboard, and how it reacted when pressed. With IBM, it was more about the positioning of the entire keyboard.
Read more at AppleInsider.com