I’ve had this idea for a few months now and have wanted to share it with the world. After reading @thomasbeta’s article on sharing ideas, I figured this would be a great opportunity to practice writing and get feedback on the idea.

This idea isn’t limited to MacBooks

But since I have one, I’ll use images and make references to Apple & MacBook products and style. I’m sure the same or similar ideas can be applied to laptops by other manufacturers.

The worry that inspired

Having a hyperactive cat whose favorite pastime is knocking over glasses of water, I often worry I’ll come back to the desk and find I forgot to move my drink and it will have been spilt.

The idea: a removable keyboard

Then one day I realized that maybe some of the risk could be removed, if the keyboard didn’t allow liquids access to the internals. I know this wouldn’t protect the laptop from spills completely, but it led to the following train of thought.

Why not make the keyboard simple to replace?

The Apple Wireless Keyboard is close to if not exactly the same size as the MacBook keyboard and if you ignore the battery compartment (for now), it’s pretty thin. So why not replace the internal keyboard with it?

Okay, that battery compartment is pretty huge but maybe it could be replaced with a much smaller battery. Let’s imagine the keyboard could be redesigned to look something like this:

Of course to match the current MacBook keyboard color scheme, we’d want black keys or maybe even other color options. Along the bottom of the back edge there could be two folded aluminum legs so users could raise the backend.

The keyboard could be kept in place or docked with magnets similar to those used in the MagSafe power adapter and charge wirelessly. As the current Apple Wireless Keyboard does, the new one would communicate via Bluetooth. Maybe even low energy Bluetooth to accommodate for the smaller battery. The current wireless keyboard doesn’t have backlit keys but maybe that’s a feature that could be enabled only while docked.

That’s all I had thought about until I was sharing this idea with a friend, when she asked…

What would be under the keyboard?

Though I hadn’t thought about it before, almost instantly it came to me.

How about a drawing surface?

The blank space left when the keyboard is removed could be used as a drawing surface similar to a Wacom tablet with enough room left on the sides for bindable touch sensitive areas for software shortcuts.

Even while writing discussing this with my wife, she brought up the idea of having different types of keyboards and controllers that could also dock in the same area. A miniature piano with very low profile keys, a stenotype keyboard layout, or a small music production controller.