Apple Files Patent for MacBook Powered By Docked iPhone [Images]

Apple has filed a patent for a MacBook housing that is powered by a docked iPhone or iPad. The patent entitled, 'ELECTRONIC ACCESSORY DEVICE' was filed September 20, 2016.

It details a laptop style housing having a recess in which you can place your iPhone or iPad. In one embodiment, the housing could have limited or no data processing resources but have output resources such as a screen and input resources such as a keyboard. It could also have memory resources. Once docked the two devices would operate as a single computational entity with the iPhone carrying out substantially all intensive computational processing.

In various embodiments, the electronic accessory device can be considered a "thin" device, in that it extends the functionality of another device but is inoperable by itself as a stand-alone device. As such, the accessory device can have little or no independent processing resources in the form of a CPU or similar comprehensive processor. The accessory device, however, can provide auxiliary processing resources, such a graphical processing unit, or GPU, or other processing resources that can support the functions of the portable computing device. However, in the context of this discussion, it is anticipated that the accessory device is not a stand-alone computing device but only acts in concert with a host device. The host device can be a portable computing device, such as, for example, a smart phone, media player, tablet computer, or other portable computing device.


Laptop accessory shells already exists. For example, the HP Elite x3 Lap Dock or the Miraxess Mirabook. However, it's unclear if Apple has any plans to bring this type of product to market.

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Read More [via Weiland]