Apple Further Explores Possibility of ‘Telephonic’ MacBooks

Earlier this year, Patently Apple presented a report concerning what it called a "Telephonic MacBook." Now, the site that covers the most noteworthy patent applications filed by Apple Inc. has dug up two new patents that support a future telephonic Macbook.

The source explains that one of the granted patents - "Antennas for wireless electronic devices" - talks of the possibility of having 3G networking, or LTE, built-into a MacBook.

The source extracts this citation from the filings: "cellular telephone communications could be handled using a multiband cellular telephone antenna and local area network data communications could be handled using a multiband wireless local area network antenna.”

Then the patent Abstract is then provided, as follows:

Antenna window structures and antennas are provided for electronic devices. The electronic devices may be laptop computers or other devices that have conductive housings. Antenna windows can be formed from dielectric members.

The dielectric members can have elastomeric properties. An antenna may be mounted inside a conductive housing beneath a dielectric member. The antenna could be formed from a parallel plate waveguide structure.

The parallel plate waveguide structure may have a ground plate and a radiator plate and may have dielectric material between the ground and radiator plates.

The ground plate can have a primary ground plate portion and a ground strip. The ground strip may reflect radio-frequency signals so that they travel through the dielectric member.

The antenna may handle radio-frequency antenna signals in one or more communications bands. The radio-frequency antenna signals pass through the dielectric member.

The inventors of Granted Patent 7,804,453 originally filed in Q2 2008 are Bing Chiang, Douglas Kough, Enrique Ayala Vazquez, Eduardo Lopez and Gregory Springer.

Patently Apple notes that Douglas Kough also worked on the “telephonic MacBook” reported back in August.