Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by slg 1787 days ago
Wikipedia[1] says the patent for this expired in 2016. Interesting enough, it also mentions that Apple filed a similar patent for a "dynamically changing OLED keyboard" in 2007. I wonder if that project was abandoned or eventually morphed into the Touchbar. Personally, I think having the screen(s) be individual keys would be a huge usability improvement over the Touchbar which doesn't have the same tactile feedback.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard

1 comments

I've always been curious as to how many patents exist where the holder actually had no intention of building the thing, for whatever reason, but didn't want anyone else to either.