Somewhat conservative when the subject is the design of its products, the Apple retains trackpad look MacBooks virtually unchanged for over a decade. It is nothing more than a visually constrained touch-sensitive glass surface that allows the user to control the cursor and select items on computers.
Although it has nothing in mind in the short term — at least as far as it is known — Apple is studying ways to reinvent this very useful area of its portable computers.
A patent registered by the company and disclosed by the Patently Applefor example, shows the idea of a MacBook built in glass with a trackpad that covers practically the entire area below the keyboard — which would eliminate the current borders used to delimit it.
This new trackpad model would allow the tactile mechanisms to be spread across the entire bottom width of the future MacBook, as shown in figure 3. In addition to eliminating the traditional cutout to delimit the trackpad, this would also reduce the thickness of the computer — which would leave it consequently lighter.
Brands that manufacture computers with Windows already brought solutions to their touchpads that go well beyond the conventional. THE LGfor example, already presented a notebook with glass construction whose touchpad becomes invisible while not being used.
Contrary to Apple’s idea, however, LG’s computer has a delimited area for it, which is highlighted by means of lights under the glass. When the touchpad is not in use, the computer displays only a large clean white surface below the keyboard.
