One of the hottest rumors right now, and possibly even hotter than that of the iPhone 7, is that this year’s MacBook Pro refresh will be huge. Sure, we can expect the usual hardware improvements to processor, battery, graphics, and so on, but a rumor has hinted that Apple could be doing away with the function keys and replacing it with an OLED touch panel strip instead.
Following the rumor, we’ve seen concept images which frankly speaking look amazing, but it seems that this concept is actually rather old. According to a report from The Verge, a designer and developer by the name of Łukasz Majer actually cooked up the concept back in 2014 and this is an idea that he actually sent in to Apple, or at least that’s what he claims.
His concept, dubbed iKeys, operates like how we imagine it would, as in it will be contextual depending on what the user is doing at the time. Now given that Majer claims he sent in the idea to Apple, we have to wonder if maybe Apple could have “borrowed” his idea for their MacBook Pro refresh.
At the same time given that Apple probably has a massive patent library, who’s to say that they did not think of this first? That being, it is still a rumor for now, albeit a bit more credible especially considering that KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is the source, but it’s still a good idea to take it with a grain of salt for now.
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