For well over a decade, there has been news of patents and clues hinting that Apple is developing all-glass MacBooks and iMacs. This week, the speculation that Apple is indeed working on such a device grew even stronger as another patent surfaced on Patently Apple. This one is for a “glass housing” on a MacBook-like device.
It has a virtual keyboard and trackpad, and there’s even a separate patent for “finger devices” that would decrease the strain of typing on a glass surface, according to Digital Trends . The glass housing “provides I/O functionality”, meaning that instead of inserting a separate trackpad or keyboard keys into the housing for users to interact with, the housing itself would provide a method of input and output. In some areas and contexts, the surface would function simply as housing to protect internal components, and in others, it would display information and react to user input.
While an all-glass MacBook sounds like a luxurious idea, there are some practical considerations that must be addressed if it is ever to become a reality, and the prime consideration would be its fragility. While there are types of extremely strong — even bulletproof — glass out there, getting the right kind of glass that is also lightweight enough to make it to a portable machine would be a challenging task. Reports from last year also indicated that Apple had patented a design for an iMac made of a sheet of glass as well.
However, given that Apple has been rep.