Report: Apple is working with Australian startup Sonder on a dynamic e-ink keyboard for future MacBooks, which could be incorporated as soon as 2018
But as rumors go, this one doesn't seem that trustworthy — Apple reportedly plans to put dynamic E Ink keyboards into MacBook laptops by 2018.
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands mid-rumor-cycle for the biggest MacBook Pro redesign in years: KGI had already reported in May that an OLED touch bar would replace the function keys, and Bloomberg followed in August with thinner chassis and Touch ID details. The Sonder report pushes the same idea further — not just a dynamic strip above the keyboard, but every key itself rendered on e-ink, potentially by 2018.
It also reads differently from today's vantage point in the corpus: the full-dynamic-keyboard path never materialized, while the touchscreen direction did — sources pointed to Macs with touchscreens in 2023, and by early 2026 to touch-screen MacBook Pros carrying a Dynamic Island. The Sonder story is an early data point in Apple's long search for software-defined input hardware.
First-order effects
- Sonder goes from obscure Australian startup to a named Apple supplier candidate, with its e-ink key technology suddenly tied to the highest-volume premium laptop line.
- Apple's 2016 keyboard decision space widens: the rumored Touch Bar refresh now has a more ambitious alternative in a fully reconfigurable e-ink deck targeted at 2018.
Second-order effects
- If e-ink keys beat the OLED strip to market, keyboard-component suppliers and the third-party shortcut-keycap ecosystem built around fixed layouts face obsolescence of their core assumption — physical legends that never change.
- Rival PC makers watching the Touch Bar versus e-ink race would need their own adaptive-input answer or cede the 'reconfigurable laptop' pitch to Apple.
Third-order effects
- The corpus arc — dynamic strip, then e-ink keys, then full touch screens with Dynamic Island-style UI — points toward laptops whose entire input surface is software-defined, making keyboard hardware a display problem rather than a mechanical one.
- A decade-long pattern of Apple testing adaptive input concepts before shipping a narrower version suggests future Mac input hardware will keep absorbing functions from the screen and trackpad into the keyboard region itself.
The trend: MacBook input hardware is steadily converging on fully dynamic, software-defined surfaces — from the 2016 function-row strip and e-ink key experiments to the touch-screen Pros now expected.