Student Kyle Buckner made this 3/4 scale model out of wood, with real working hinges and everything, and hand-drew the Dock, icons, keyboard, trackpad, and even the little Philips screws on with a pencil. It also features a magnetically-attached "screen" that has a pull-tab underneath. When pulled, the tab shows a very cool film strip drawing with illustrations of the wonders of Mac. Check out the gallery below for more shots. [Kyle Buckner, thanks Kyle!]

Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times has a different theory about the device that could point to at least one of its functions. He thinks it's being poised as an ebook:

There's something I keep hearing, and I don't think I'd rank it as high as a rumor, but it's an interesting story that I keep hearing, that for awhile, trucks loaded with books would arrive at a loading dock on the Apple campus, and offload big, big, big, big, huge loads of books, and then the trucks would leave empty. And Apple does not have a 100,000-book employee library there on the Apple campus. So one is prone to believe that they're doing something with these books, such as turning them into text for some purpose we can only guess at. There's been a long-standing rumor that Apple has been silently preparing to open a bookstore on the iTunes store, and they want to make sure that they have a very large stock of electronic titles when they do open.

In other words, iTunes could compete with Amazon in the literary marketplace with a 10-inch touchscreen device at the helm.

If nothing else, it's one heck of a fun rumor. But if Apple weren't interested in using Google's large electronic library and they didn't want to cut a deal with Amazon, digitizing their own content would be a pretty feasible solution. [Newsarama via Digital Daily]

The story is more or less the same: Apple is allegedly planning a touchscreen netbook for release as early as H2 of this year. As chum, this new report throws out a display size figure of "between 9.7-inches and 10-inches," again pointing to Wintek as the display supplier and Quanta as the device manufacturer. Actually, the most interesting part of this report is what remained unsaid, at least by the parties involved:

Jill Tan, a spokeswoman for Apple in Asia, declined to comment Tuesday. Wintek spokeswoman Susie Lee and Quanta Computer investor relations officer Carol Hsu declined to comment.

Obviously this isn't proof of anything, but it is a rich—and uniformly held—silence.

Aside from lending the original rumor a bit more credibility, the new report doesn't do anything to address the most pressing questions: what form-factor, and how much? I don't suspect we'll get answers to these questions until the existence of the "it" is a bit more certain, which, judging by the claimed shipping target, could be a while. [DJW via CNET Asia]

Their information comes from Wintek, the company slated to provide the touch panels for the device—the netbook itself will be made by Quanta Computer.

So can the rumors be believed? The Commercial Times did spill the beans on the original iPhone. But they've been wrong about plenty of other stuff in their time, too.

Also, who is saying that Apple is creating a "netbook" by general standards? Would such a device look anything like Asus' or MSI's netbooks, especially if it's to feature a touchscreen? [DigiTimes]

Featuring a 10-inch extra wide screen and a folding (detaching?) style, the MacBook Mini offers users both a keyboard and a trackpad—simultaneously if desired.

And while it all makes for pretty pictures, the idea of various optional components a la Bug Labs is so anti Apple design philosophy (at least as we see in the compact designs of the iPhone or even MacBook Air) that the renders aren't good for much more than a chuckle. Oh, and then there's the point of that trackpad being completely useless should you make the screen touch-compatible (really, 30% of this design should go to a mouse?).

But censor the image in your mind for a moment. As a folding iPod Touch XL with optional QWERTY, it definitely has my interest piqued. [TechEBlog via bbGadgets]

[The device] will provide Web access, email, media playing, and essential applications at a single low price. Computer beginners will be able to start using it quickly and easily. Users will have fewer questions, problems, conflicts and security breaches, as the device will be less intimidating than both PCs and Macs. As with the iPhone, iTunes and the App Store will offer an array of content, applications and games. As with the iPhone, the software can be rebuilt from the App Store. With an optional online backup service, the entire device can be restored…. Because all applications are delivered through the iTunes App Store, Apple will maintain sustained relationships with users, making it easier to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers.

It's an interesting, be it Utopian, vision of a future Apple product. And the idea makes sense from a platform perspective—Apple could do for computer software what iTunes has done for music and iPhone apps already.

But where Gottheil's argument is particularly convincing is the point where he conveniently (and intelligently) abandons any discussion of form factor. Because it's hard to imagine Apple developing any laptop under 12 inches. And while the oversized iPhone/iPod touch tablet idea sounds pretty great at first, such a product seems to outgrow netbook category once you factor in the costs (both in price and power draw) associated with a large multi-touch screen.

Digital Daily's John Paczkowski is quick to evoke the words of Jobs himself from October's iPod event:

There are some customers which we chose not to serve. We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.

Gottheil's reconciliation with that point? He thinks the computer will run you $599.

Given iSupply's $173 manufacturing price estimate of the 8GB iPhone 3G, maybe a $599 8ish-inch "Netbook touch" isn't technically insane..but it's hard to imagine given Apple's preference for high profit margins. [Digital Daily]