image via Patently Apple
If you're one of the many that have suffered poor reception when jaw-wagging on your iPhone 4 due to the handset's much maligned antenna design, Apple may have a solution for you in the not so far-flung future: A MacBook with an integrated cellular antenna that could allow for 3G and possibly even LTE connections, making phone calls from your laptop sans VoIP a possibility.
Go ahead. Give it a try: Put a death-grip on a laptop. We challenge you.
According to Patently Apple, such technology could be in the cards as Apple has been awarded a patent which could pave the way for what has been described as Telephonic MacBooks. As part of the Cupertino-based company's patent application, Apple submitted the following abstract to describe what their new design was driving for:
Antenna window structures and antennas are provided for electronic devices. The electronic devices may be laptop computers or other devices that have conductive housings. Antenna windows can be formed from dielectric members. The dielectric members can have elastomeric properties. An antenna may be mounted inside a conductive housing beneath a dielectric member. The antenna could be formed from a parallel plate waveguide structure. The parallel plate waveguide structure may have a ground plate and a radiator plate and may have dielectric material between the ground and radiator plates. The ground plate can have a primary ground plate portion and a ground strip. The ground strip may reflect radio-frequency signals so that they travel through the dielectric member. The antenna may handle radio-frequency antenna signals in one or more communications bands. The radio-frequency antenna signals pass through the dielectric member.
In a nutshell, Apple's engineers have come up with a method for building a wireless antenna into a device with a conductive housing--such as a unibody MacBook Pro--that is still able to make a cellular connection through areas of the device's housing made of non-conductive material. This would allow Apple to do away with the unsightly plastic antenna enclosures that can currently be found on devices like the WiFi+3G iPad, replacing it with more of the seamless industrial design that Apple been so hot for of late. More interesting than this, is the fact that the antenna technology could provide users with the ability to connect to a number of signals at the same time. This could open the door for MacBook Pro owners to make cellular phone calls on their laptops while rocking a 3G or WiFi internet connection. For roadwarriors, this would be a very sweet situation indeed. The inclusion of data and voice options in future iterations of Apple's laptops could also provide carriers with an opening to offer up subsidized MacBook Pros for those willing to sign up for data and voice plans to use with the laptop, in much the same way as they already provide their customers the ability to either purchase a cellular handset outright, or at a discount when paired with a service contract.
Of course, as with any patent associated with Apple, we'd suggest taking this one with a grain of salt right up until the point where you it shows up in a Keynote presentation.
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