Not a long time ago appeared in the patent office, one from Apple in which the company adapted an old idea —unpatentable, we believe—: that of a keyboard that was a computer. That was already done in the 80s by the Spectrum, the Amstrad or the Commodore 64.
The point is that actually Apple already has something like this, because the MacBooks they can be “decapitated” to remove the screen and act as PCs to connect to a monitor. More and more people are doing it.and the proposal makes a lot of sense in a particular scenario.
That scenario is clear: when a MacBook’s screen breaks—for example, from a blow—it can probably continue to function as a PC. A user on Twitter uncovered a curious trend that he had detected: that more and more people were buying a MacBook Pro without a screen to use it as a kind of Mac mini.
More and more people are buying a MacBook Pro without a screen to use as a Mac mini. Not only does it have a trackpad and keyboard, but it also has better speakers, and the main price is particularly affordable. pic.twitter.com/WtxMQk1h8F
— DuanRui (@duanrui1205) March 7, 2022
A user on Twitter uncovered a curious trend that he had detected: that more and more people were buying a MacBook Pro without a screen to use it as a kind of Mac mini.
Recycling MacBooks with a broken screen
One that also already has its integrated keyboard and trackpad, as well as good speakers. The price of these computers on sites with second-hand products is also usually much more interesting than that of complete computers because many people give them up for lost, but in reality they can still be used as desktop PCs.
This idea is in fact an adaptation of the way millions of people work: they buy a laptop, but use it as a desktop PC connecting it to an external monitor and even to a mouse and keyboards with which they are most comfortable.
Don’t waste pic.twitter.com/BPnChEjg0I
—Nicolas Sampré (@nsampre) March 7, 2022
They even close the lid of the laptop and don’t use it as a secondary screen, which gives versatility because when they want they can disconnect everything and take the laptop elsewhere to use it without problems.
In The Verge They experimented with that idea, although they did it more out of curiosity to convert a portable computer —with a functional screen— in a curious PC that can be taken to the living room, for example to use a Smart TV where to see the screen output by streaming.
They played around with the term “slabtop” (‘slab’ is a flat surface of a certain thickness, a slab or block in English), and they told how certain things are lost (the webcam, for example) but the proposal gives more freedom and portability than that of a conventional laptop.
Buying a laptop with a working screen and then doing something like that seems strange and even absurd, but of course the idea does make sense when it is possible to find computers like the MacBook Pro with a broken screen for much less than what they would cost complete. Using them later as that kind of “Mac mini” is of course interesting and allows to give a new life to these equipments.
The idea is not, as we say, particularly novel, and surely there will be people who have already thought about it. In fact, it is not exclusive to MacBooks, and it is perfectly feasible to do the same on Windows-based laptops, so if you are looking for a cheap PC, you may not want to look for a PC as such, but a laptop with the screen broken.
Image: Reddit
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