Sonder's Customizable E-Ink Keyboard Again Rumored for 2018 MacBooks as CEO Denies Meeting Tim Cook
In an ongoing story surrounding the alleged talks between Apple and Australian startup Sonder, The Wall Street Journal is today adding its own set of "people familiar with the plans" to the report. The new article reiterates a 2018 launch window for customizable e-ink keyboards on Apple's MacBook line, which was mentioned in a now-deleted Reddit post that began the rumors last week.
In response to the increasing amount of rumors surrounding Apple and Sonder, the latter company this week has confirmed that it never met with Apple during Tim Cook's travels in China and Japan, suggesting that any talk of Apple's acquisition of Sonder is false.
In a press release, Sonder CEO Francisco Serra-Martin stated that the original article by The Guardian -- which ignited the story on the back of the Reddit post -- "contains a number of factual errors." Serra-Martin confirmed that he "did not meet Tim Cook on Wednesday 12th October 2016," which The Guardian story said he did, without providing specifics of the meeting and its potential relation to acquisition talks.
The Guardian’s article “Apple in talks to acquire Australian startup Sonder” contains a number of factual errors. Sonder founder Francisco Serra-Martins did not meet Tim Cook on Wednesday 12th October 2016, although we would very like the opportunity to in the future.
The team at Sonder is pleased with the incredible response from the industry as we continue to present our story. We are not able to comment further on information on any single company or customer. Sonder’s E Ink keyboard provides infinite possibilities right at your fingertips and releases later this year.
With Serra-Martin's direct confirmation of the original story's lack of veracity, it appears that, for now, Apple's plans aren't immediately related to introducing the customizable e-ink technology into MacBooks or Magic Keyboards. Sonder's own e-ink "Sonder Keyboard" is launching later this year for $199.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Top Rated Comments
But in all seriousness, this is an interesting concept, but as the main input option for a computer, would likely seem a little too gimmicky for Apple to try to rock the boat. Can you imagine the rush to class action lawsuits if 2 or 3 of these had errors and someone couldn't change their keys back from Mandarin or emojis? Certainly someone would need to cover those lost wages and the emotional distress. :eek: