Apple patent reveals docking gadget to turn iPhone and iPad into a complete computer

Apple patent reveals docking gadget to turn iPhone and iPad into a complete computer

APPLE has a simple plan to turn your iPhone or iPad into a new type of MacBook that is possibly Apple’s smartest, and dumbest, computer ever.

A day after news of Samsung’s smartphone dock broke, the US Patent office has approved an Apple patent to use the smarts in the iPhone or iPad in a “dumb” MacBook dock.

Unlike the Samsung dock, which adds ports to a Samsung smartphone but no extra keyboard, the Apple idea for the iPhone and iPad is a more complete computing solution.

While some patents, by the time they are approved, show ideas that are several years old, this latest patent by Apple was only lodged about the time Apple released the iPhone 7 last year.

Apple has been granted a patent for the “Electronic Accessory Device” that would drop an iPhone into the keyboard of a MacBook-style dock, so that the iPhone screen becomes the trackpad, or in another version the iPad becomes the MacBook-style dock’s screen — unlike a real MacBook, would still be a touchscreen.

The patent, discovered by Apple Insider, isn’t just as simple as a keyboard with a hole for the iPad or iPhone.

Certainly, with the patent description of the MacBook shell as not having a processor, you’re relying on the computer power of the iOS to drive the thing. So, in that way, the device would not be dissimilar to current iPad docks like the Clamcase that adds an aluminium shell and keyboard.

But with the Apple patent, the dock would offer more.

“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,” the patent says.

So, the dock could boost the graphics capability, or add some needed battery power, and perhaps even include a USB-C port which, even by itself, would be something of a game changer for the iPhone.

Apple is not the first smartphone company that has played with the idea of using the smartphone as the brains of a computer-style dock.

And, just because it has a patent, it does not mean that it will become a product.

Still, if you like the idea of travelling with a really light laptop, Apple could be working on something that is just the thing.