Apple will release a stronger, more premium-feeling iPad Magic Keyboard alongside the iPad Pro next year, according to Mark Gurman’s latest Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. The keyboard, he reports, will use an aluminum top case while keeping the soft material found on the bottom of the keyboard now. It will also still have only one USB-C port, he writes.
Gurman notes that the current keyboard is prone to bending and tearing over time, so hopefully an aluminum top case and the larger trackpad he wrote about last week will improve things, though one wonders about closing it over the iPad’s screen. The updated iPad Pro design isn’t coming until next year, so how Apple handles that is for future us to learn.
A hardier Magic Keyboard with a bigger trackpad will go a long way to making the iPad feel more like a laptop, and I think that’s probably a good thing. That is if Apple can actually thread the needle of making appropriate software and hardware changes while still keeping the iPad true to itself, which so far has seemed like an understandably big challenge. It doesn’t seem like a shiny new keyboard can make for a better iPad on its own, though. At least, it hasn’t so far.
