Touch ID is the fingerprint system employed by Apple on their iOS devices. Now if you’re thinking (like the rest of us) that Touch ID would make great sense on Apple’s MacBooks, it seems that the Cupertino company agrees. A recently published patent (via Cult of Mac) has revealed that Apple had at one point toyed with the idea.
As you can see in the diagram above, it shows a somewhat outdated-looking computer where built into its side, there is space for a fingerprint scanner. Now we should point out that the patent was filed for back in 2007, which we guess shouldn’t really be a surprise given how dated the computer in the diagram looks.
What this also means is that this is an idea that Apple might have long given up on, although there is a possibility that maybe with today’s fingerprint sensors being a lot faster than they used to be, we could see the idea revisited in the near future. After all like we said above, Touch ID for laptops would make a lot of sense.
In fact Microsoft’s recently announced Surface Pro 4 comes with a built-in fingerprint sensor, and we doubt that Apple will want to let Microsoft hog all the credit for it.