Gizmodo: apple brick

New Pics Surface of Anonymous Apple Laptop

Elaine Chow — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:29:27 EDT

Taiwanese blog Apple.Pro has put out a couple more pictures that could be related to the upcoming Macbook Pro. We're not sure if they're real or not, but there are enough photos out there to at least mostly rule out Photoshop. While the new pictures resemble case images we saw earlier, it looks to be designed for a smaller laptop and lacks their speaker grills.

The keyboard seems to be identical to the MacBook Air, but with a larger trackpad. The left side houses all the ports (much like the earlier photo), while the right side has a slot for the optical drive. Apple.Pro is responsible for previous case images as well, but only time will tell how accurate their tips are. [Apple Pro via Mac Rumors]

Apple's 'Brick' is a Revolutionary Aluminum Manufacturing Process?

Jason Chen — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:12:50 EDT

9to5 Mac has gone on record as saying that the rumored Apple Brick isn't a product, but a manufacturing process that can make high quality aluminum shells. The "brick" part comes in because the supposed technique carves these MacBook casings with lasers and high pressure water jets out of bricks of aluminum, making for a seamless and screwless design. Whether or not it's true is still left to be seen, but one benefit would mean that there would be no need to bend metal (which creates weak spots). Again, no idea if this is legit, but 9 to 5 Mac has a fairly decent track record, which they conveniently point out at the end of their post. [9 to 5 Mac]

Update: Apple's previously stated that they found a company in China to manufacture their iMacs out of a single piece of aluminum. So, assuming the rumor isn't 100% accurate, this could be a new process with the same company to make MacBooks in a similar way, or Apple found a way to do this themselves with a in-house plant.

Rumor Roundup: Apple Brick

Mark Wilson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:40:00 EDT

What is the Apple Brick? It's a rumor that started over at 9 to 5 Mac. A trusted source told the site that the (also rumored) October 14th Apple Event would be "all about the Brick." The fun sort of spiraled from there, with plenty of guesses of just what the Brick could be...

TGDaily (Netbook)
"There is some chatter that this "Brick" is actually a Mac tablet, but we here at TG Daily believe that if that is in fact the case, Macworld in January may be a more appropriate event to unveil a tablet. Another rumor has it that Apple may introduce a brand-new sub-notebook to compete with Asustek's EeePC."

iPhone Savior (Mac Mini Pro)
"Sources have indicated Apple's "one more thing," code named 'Brick' rumored to be announced around October 14th along with a MacBook refresh, will actually be a re-design of the Mac Mini super-sized to reveal a Mac Mini Pro of sorts."

ComputerWorld (Wireless USB Hub)
"Perhaps the "brick" would have a Wireless USB hub...We know that most features of a traditional dock can be used with USB. Audio in/out, keyboards, mice, DVD drives, external hard drives, networking... even new displays can be plugged in via USB. "

Macenstein (Windows Smasher)
"...it is now our belief that The Brick has nothing to do with the device actually looking physically like a brick at all. Rather, we feel it is likely that it is simply a name for an upcoming product (or group of products) that Apple thinks will be sexy enough to pull a huge marketshare away from Microsoft. After all, how do you break “Windows”? You throw a brick through them!"

All we know for sure is that all of these guesses cannot be right...assuming the "Brick" is a real product in the first place.