The latest patent approved for Apple in the United States Patent and Trademark Office refers to the possibility of using an iPhone as a TrackPad on MacBook or on computers similar to a MacBook and iPad as a screen. His The application was submitted in September 2016 and credits engineer Brett W. Degner as its inventor. This patent is somewhat curious and talks about an accessory similar to a Mac called "thin" that would be used to house an iPhone and make use of the set as if it were an Apple computer but with the iPhone as a brain.
These types of patents are quite curious and from the images we have of it we can say that we are facing a device very similar to a MacBook with iOS, which even adds its own GPU, keyboard, screen, etc, but with a perfect fit where we have the TrackPad to place the iPhone. In the case of the iPad what we see is the device used as a screen.
We can get an idea of what they have patented and it seems at least something strange for day to day, but it is not the first device that we would see of this style, since there is a tablet (from ASUS) that allows you to dock the smartphone and use this on a larger screen when we need it, but it is not exactly the same. In any case we have to clarify that patents are simply that, registered patents and does not mean that we have to see this new product, case or MacBook without "guts" in the near future. What is clear is that the patent registered and accepted by the American organization already belongs to Apple.