Attempts to change the venerable keyboard are usually met with failure – despite promising claims of productivity benefits, there’s often too great a pay-off for users used to the traditional QWERTY ‘board – but if anyone can encourage us to upgrade, perhaps it’s Apple.  Their latest patent describes a MultiTouch surface particularly suitable for a MacBook (or a Mac Tablet, maybe?) which, thanks to a lifting framework of key-edges that presses underneath, can be both a smooth touchpad or a delineated keyboard.

An evolution, perhaps, of the FingerWorks TouchStream MacNTouch, which replaces standard MacBook keyboards with a trackpad platter, the patent describes the usability drawback of a non-edged keyboard and Apple’s vision of a potential improvement:

“User acceptance of the TouchStream.TM. integrated typing, pointing and gesture input devices manufactured by FingerWorks demonstrated that learning to type on a smooth, un-textured surface is possible, but takes substantial practice. In many ways, typing on such a surface is almost like learning to type all over again. It is believed that mainstream acceptance of typing on touch surfaces will require shortening of the typing re-acclimation period, which, in turn, requires improved keystroke tactility”

Of course, in the move away from mechanical components in laptops it seems strange to imagine a newly complex mechanism which would rise beneath the keyboard, but this could be some sort of electrostatic “memory” surface rather than a traditional frame.  Still, while you shouldn’t expect to necessarily see this in Apple Stores anytime soon, it would be an interesting development for the much-rumored Mac Tablet: a screen that could be touched and gestured on, but then which could also be used as a pretty precise keyboard.