Docking Station for Mac Portable

Digging through past patent records, Apple made application a few years ago, July 3, 2006 to be exact, for a docking station that would hold and ultra-thin portable Macintosh. In stories being reported around the web today from the London Times, Financial Times to MacDailyNews, this illustration portends the announcement on January 15th of a new Apple subnotebook.

US Patent Office # 20080002350

On another page, a newbie poster to the Mac Rumor forums claims to have a photo of the ultra-thin laptop being developed at Apple. The photo is actually hilarious to look at and looks like a comic satire of Apple design with its large track pad and fat click pad spanning the front of the keyboard.

Obviously, this is a poor photoshop job by an amateur but still very funny to see. One amusing aspect of the run up to MacWorld is obviously unintelligent attempts to mock up phony Apple products and claim they are leaked out from inside Apple.

Apple Ultra-thin Subnotebook Rumored

Apple is rumored to be revealing a ultra-portable 'subnotebook' less than 3 pounds, between 15 and 18mm thick, built-in iSight, flash memory, a detachable external drive capable of reading CD and DVDs and a 13.3 inch display.

According to the website MacScoop Steve Jobs will unveil the new subnotebook at the MacWorld 2008 in San Francisco in mid-January. A big question is whether the new device will be grouped into the iPod, iPhone or Mac laptop lines and if Apple is building their verbless touch screen technologies into their Macs or limiting it to the iPod Touch and iPhone products.

Speculators also suggest, according to trusted sources, that the new tablet will have satellite navigation capabilities built-in. Prior to its agreement to cease publishing ThinkSecret reported that Apple would use new ultra-thin a 1.8 inch hard drive in the new device rather than a flash drive.

MacScoop is also reporting that the next iPhone software update will add copy/paste capabilities, one of the most requested features by iPhone owners.

Without mentioning the Gear Live firmware update 1.1.3 leak by name, MacScoop suggested that version premiered on the web is not a full featured version planned for the final release this month.