Future Apple keyboard could have one key that can pop out and be used as a mouse

Apple will not let go of an idea where a single key on the MacBook Pro keyboard could be taken out, used as a precision mouse, and then popped back in again.

“Deployable Key Mouse,” is a newly-granted patent, yet Apple must be really serious about this idea because it was previously granted a near-identical patent for an application filed in 2022 — and in 2020.

These granted patents — all with the same title — sound less like Apple’s typical futuristic plans, though, and more a throwback to the pre-trackpad days of the 1980s.

Back then, PC users could snap a mouse to the side of their laptops, and then struggle to use these deeply unergonomic devices. The problem was chiefly that they were very awkwardly positioned, but they could also be so small that they were uncomfortable.

Apple does explore every conceivable take on keyboards, not always successfully, but this is perhaps the most peculiar. It’s the work of prolific Apple inventor Paul X. Wang, whose previous research includes plans for a glass keyboard, and who here has a novel idea for using and storing a removable mouse.

What this patent application proposes is that a regular keyboard, such as that on a MacBook Pro, might feature one special key that is removable. Take that shift key — or perhaps the “Global” key from the Magic Keyboard — and there’s your mouse.

There’s your very, very small mouse.

“The removable key can have a position sensor,” says the patent application, “[so it] is operable as a computer pointing device… The removable key structure can therefore allow comfortable, portable, and precise pointer input for a computer input system.”

True, you could move the key/mouse around a desk and get more precision control over your cursor. But going by the patent application’s drawings, this would be even smaller and more cumbersome than Apple’s infamous hockey puck mouse.

Curiously, there’s no mention of that failure when Apple’s newly granted patent talks about how the company popularized the mouse in the 1980s.

“In the succeeding years, the computer mouse has undergone a series of innovations including the addition of a right- and left-click button, a scroll wheel, an optical sensor, a track ball sensor, a laser sensor, and wireless communication to the host computer,” it continues.

“In some cases, portable computing devices such as laptop and tablet computers benefit from using a peripheral mouse input device,” says Apple. “However, the user is then burdened with carrying the separate mouse with the computer, and the separate device can be redundant when the computer already has built-in pointing devices.”

So the aim here is not to replace the trackpad, but rather to give an optional extra mouse when finer control is needed. While the application does not go into more detail about uses and benefits, you can imagine a Photoshop user having occasional need for real precision in their image editing.

Detail from the patent showing two different ways such a key could be easily removed to be used as a mouse

The patent is concerned with how a physical key could work both in and out of the keyboard. In it, the key must react and respond like any other on the keyboard.

And then when it has been removed, it must have this position-sensing capability. Plus being removed from the MacBook Pro, or other device, it must have its own circuitry and battery.

It’s got to do that while being a very, very small mouse.

“A mouse typically incorporates an ergonomic shape to fit comfortably into the hand,” says the application as it describes how pointing devices have evolved over the years. “Which is one factor that has kept its size relatively stable.”

There’s no question that at times even a keyboard junkie needs the precision of a mouse. And there’s no question that this sounds like a typically clever idea from Apple to give them one.

But even temporarily, it would also leave the keyboard with an ugly hole in it. And that part does not sound like Apple at all.