Apple is continuing to work out how to let the iPad-centric Apple Pencil do the old Touch Bar job on future MacBook Pro surfaces. It’s just a patent application, and Apple grants thousands of these patents every year, which doesn’t mean any actual product will appear.
Apple’s newly exposed patent application titled “Installable Tool Computer Input,” as well as a March 2022 patent of the same name granted, provide some hints at what Apple is thinking.
The inventor of the patent doesn’t seem to want people to draw and write on the MacBook Pro’s screen, but rather that they sometimes use the Apple Pencil. Specifically, they’ll at least use the Pencil in areas where Apple has included the Touch Bar in the past.
Apple said in its patent application that computing devices, such as laptops, can have a touchscreen in or next to the device’s keyboard that can be configured to provide more functionality than a traditional set of keys, however, in some cases, accessibility A touchscreen can be difficult to use, and users may not enjoy using a touchscreen because it lacks tactile feedback compared to a set of mechanical, moving keys.
The patent doesn’t seem to rule out a touchscreen Mac, but it focuses on a Touch Bar-like bar. The touch screen is also generally positioned close to the user’s hand, so it may be easily blocked by the user’s own hand, and even if the user is looking at the touch screen, it is positioned at a different focal distance from the user than the main display, so the user must Reorient their head or eyes to effectively read and interact with the touchscreen.
Apple used to go to great lengths for the Touch Bar, but now the Touch Bar may be replaced by a touch panel. The touch panel may include a touch-sensitive surface that, upon detection of a touch event, generates a signal that can be processed and used by other components of the electronic device, and the display component of the electronic device may display text representing selectable virtual buttons or icons and/or graphic display elements, while touch-sensitive surfaces allow users to navigate and change what is displayed on the display screen.
None of this seems to immediately address Apple’s criticism of the Touch Bar. Users will have to interrupt typing, find the pencil, lift it from the stand, and use it to write or tap on the touch-sensitive strip. Details in the patent show the user tapping the pencil, or touching it, or swiping it. When the Apple Pencil is on the stand, it can display Touch Bar-like controls.