MacBook Pro 2016 release date, specs new: Magic Keyboard with E Ink revealed in Foxconn Beijing event?

Jackie Villegas Thursday, October 13, 2016

The new Macbook Pro is pictured during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2012 in San Francisco, California. | Reuters/Stephen Lam

Apart from supposedly adding an OLED bar to the MacBook Pro 2016 keyboard and giving the premium laptop a detachable touchscreen, Apple appears to have one other MacBook Pro trick up its sleeve.

On Wednesday, Oct. 12, Reddit user Foxconninsider shared some interesting new details about the rumored MacBook Pro 2016.

Intriguingly, the Redditor submitted the info he had to the subreddit's moderating team, who then vouched for the unidentified source and confirmed his identity. According to the anonymous Redditor, he came upon the new Apple info because he works at Tsinghua University, which he described as "the Chinese MIT."

Foxconninsider reported that he had access to the info because Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics multinational that builds many of Apple's products, held a closed-door event at the University. During the event, prototypes of a couple of unreleased Apple devices were showed off.

The Redditor said that one of the devices Foxconn presented at the University was the "new MacBook Keyboard module" for the next MacBook Pro, confirming that the keyboard of the MacBook Pro 2016 could indeed have an OLED function key panel. News of the OLED touch bar on the new MacBook Pros came out earlier this year, with MacGeneration claiming that macOS Sierra API changes may support the rumored OLED panel.

In addition to the much-hyped OLED touch bar, Foxconninsider also claimed to have seen another Apple device, one that no tech industry watcher has yet predicted. This device is said to be a prototype of what the Redditor called the E Ink Magic Keyboard.

Unlike Apple's current Magic Keyboards, this new device is said to have individual E Ink displays on each and every key. This enables users to assign different functions to individual keys or groups of keys depending on their needs or as certain applications require.

Foxconninsider said the new Magic Keyboard is being developed by a startup called Sonder. Apple is reportedly planning to release the keyboard sometime in 2018.