Apple’s engineers are always working on new inventions and improvements for existing devices. We usually get to see some of these great ideas when the US Patent and Trademark Office decides to publish patent applications of the Cupertino-based company. Last week, they published a new one.

The new patent is a modification of the iPad’s smart keyboard which gives it a secondary flexible display. The patent has multiple claims which include the display presenting a set of virtual keys that defines an application’s toolbar; and  the display being capable of receiving a multi-touch gesture configured to move an application from the application toolbar to the first display(the iPad’s screen) amongst others.

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The new setup could see the display positioned above the keys or below the keys, fulfilling the iPad Pro’s dream of being a PC replacement.

This new design is similar to a news reported earlier this year, of Apple possibly replacing the function keys at the top of the keyboard of the Macbook Pro with a touch bar. This is actually a pretty neat idea. I can already imagine developers creating new functions for the touch bar such as control options for media apps (as seen in the artistic rendering above), editing options for image viewers and word processors, and quick launch keys for certain apps which can be customised by the user. If this eventually get’s to see the light of day, it’ll be a big revolution for the keyboard.

Source: PatentlyApple

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