The next MacBook Pro could dramatically slim down Apple's laptop design with a sleek retractable keyboard. And after years of maintaining the same tired, bulky look, it's time for a revamp.

The idea was discovered by Patently Apple in the form of a newly granted patent, simply titled "Retractable Keyboard," filed by Apple in August 2019. The point of the patent is to explore ways to make the MacBook thinner without reducing the size of the keys, which would be a welcome change for the laptop, assuming it does not interfere with its basic functionality.

Within the patent page, we see that Apple is touting a keyboard that works as a whole. There, when the lid is closed, the keys sink into the body of the laptop, and when opened, they rise up again due to a magnetic structure physically attached to the hinge.

The last time Apple came up with a bright idea in terms of keyboards, it came up with the unpopular butterfly keyboard, which was widely criticized and was eventually introduced on the larger 16-inch MacBook Pro in 2019 and the 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook earlier this year It was replaced by the Magic Keyboard on the Air.

The good news is that the patent shows a keyboard design with both a traditional scissor and butterfly mechanism. Lenovo introduced the ThinkPad Yoga in 2013, and when that 2-in-1 was put into tablet mode, the keys retracted.

This keyboard patent is not the only way Apple is trying to reinvent the MacBook Pro. At the WWDC 2020 conference this week, Apple announced the introduction of Apple Silicon for the Mac, which will be a new series of processors that will use the ARM architecture instead of Intel.

These new Apple chips promise to deliver a better balance of performance and power consumption and could allow Apple to offer thinner and lighter designs. Apple has said that the first Apple Silicon-powered Mac will appear this year, but it is unclear whether it will be a laptop, a desktop, or an all-in-one PC like the rumored iMac 2020.

If Apple can leverage its own silicon and put a retractable keyboard on the same MacBook, it could become the thinnest MacBook ever and compete with sleek Windows laptops like the class-leading Dell XPS 13.