Apple patent shows e-ink Touch Bar with ‘chameleon function’

An Apple patent shows a Touch Bar made of electronic ink instead of OLED. Thanks to e-ink, such a Touch Bar would support a ‘chameleon function’, where the bar disappears into the rest of the laptop’s design.

In the ‘chameleon function’, the bar takes over the color of the laptop housing, so that it disappears more into the design than is possible with the current Touch Bar. Apple would also like to use the electronic ink Touch Bar for functions such as displaying status indicators such as GPS coordinates and the range of Wi-Fi, Apple Insider writes. In addition, the patent shows an iPad with Touch Bar.

The Touch Bar of the current MacBook Pro models is an OLED strip with multitouch. It is unknown whether Apple will replace that with an electronic ink screen in a next generation. Apple is also working with the Australian company Sonder on an entire keyboard with keys made of electronic ink, it turned out a few months ago. Apple files many patent applications and many of the techniques described never make it into products.