Apple looking to the history, working on how to set a Mac in a keyboard

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Apple’s Magic Keyboard could become more magical and thicker in the future, as it is working to incorporate an entire Mac into it. Steve Jobs made much of the fact that the Mac mini was BYODKM, a device where you bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse. Apple may be looking to reduce this even further to only requiring you to bring your own display. A newly granted patent, “Computer as an input device,” proposes a Mac that is the size of a key board. And would also be keyboard. A computer that follows this patent will look like a keyboard, similar to the Apple II, Vic 20 and Sinclair QL computers of the 1980s. It would be taller or bigger than the current Apple Magic Keyboard but not by much. The patent states that “a strong demand for portable computers that deliver high performance” has led to the miniaturization and shrinkage of the bulky computing components needed to power and drive these devices. The patent continues: “Components such as processors and batteries, memory and integrated circuits are now manufactured in smaller footprints for lightweight and thin portable computing device.” Apple claims that “further tailoring” of housing designs, shapes and configurations is therefore possible and desirable. The patent is essentially a description of how to ventilate a keyboard in order to keep its components cool. It contains more than 130,000 words. There are multiple references to making a device like this even more portable. Apple, for example, says that “the computing device can be folded around an axis.” For another, “where the user may desire that the device… have wireless internet connectivity [it] can include a cell antenna.” This is in a section which is more concerned with the space available for the components than what the components will be. It does say that they don’t have to be: its own display. Apple says that “this device configuration allows a user to have a single computing device” and “that can provide desktop computing at any location with one or more computer screens.” Brett W. Degner is one of three inventors credited with this patent. His previous work in this area includes a patent relating to making an iMac out of one sheet glass.