Will the next MacBook have no physical keyboard?

Above: Patent filed by Apple Below: Macbook

It has been learnt that Apple, in September last year, has filed a patent that could help make their uber-thin Macbooks that much thinner by negating the need for physical keyboard keys.

Filed under the name ‘Zero Travel’, it could indicate some sort of large touchpad, exhibiting properties similar to their Force Touch trackpads currently being used on their MacBook and MacBook Pro.

The patent filing also indicates the presence of tiny perforations in the keyboard, which could indicate the outline of individual keys while also replacing conventional key backlighting.

Whether this innovation finds its way into Apple’s forthcoming products is virtually impossible to say, guarded as the company’s future product strategies are. But if it does, such a feature could point to something even more exciting–the possibility of re-mapping the entire keyboard area depending on the application being used.

Either way, it’ll be interesting to see what Apple has in mind for implementing their version of ‘typing on glass’, a user experience that hasn’t at all been implemented effectively as yet.