Following in Optimus Maximus' footsteps

Jan 5, 2008 11:03 GMT  ·  By

Apple is reported to have filled a patent application for an OLED-enabled keyboard, able to display an infinite number of symbols. According to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office's Website, the company has filled patent 20080001787, also known as Dynamically Controlled Keyboard.

The keyboard is comprised of keys featuring OLED layers formed on a glass substrate. The organic displays will come in a 9-by-9 matrix and will allow the user to switch them on or off via a piece of software in charge with morphing the display on the key top. The patent has been filled last March, but it was recently published on the Patent Office website.

"One advantage is that keyboards and other peripherals are made much more user-friendly and the users' experience is enhanced, since there is a direct correspondence between what is displayed on the keyboard faces and the action that occurs when the corresponding keys are depressed," reads the application. "This minimizes the users' need to memorize various keyboard layouts, for example, for different locales."

The advantage in using an OLED-enabled morphing keyboard is obvious, and would allow complete, on-the-fly character localization. For instance, the English QWERTY standard layout can be switched to a Russian key map in a blink of an eye. The multimedia keys could be easily customized to reflect the applications' icons they are triggering by default.

"Whenever a user presses a function key or an auxiliary key, such as the Shift or the Ctrl key, the other keys on the keyboard change dynamically to display various tool functions that are activated by the function keys or auxiliary keys," said Apple in the same document.

Unlike Art Lebedev's Optimus Maximus expensive keyboard, Apple's device will be reasonably priced as "standard components used in conventional keyboards are largely used." This will surely be bad news for the ones who have already pumped up quite significant amounts of money in the Optimus Maximus OLED keyboard.