Apple rumor roundup: aluminum Mac minis and supersized iPod touches

Listen, you know the drill by now: Macworld is less than a week away, and that causes a Cupertino-sized rumor mill to fill up with hints of new / refreshed hardware of all shapes and sizes. The crew at TUAW claim they've heard from sources that a new Mac mini will be unveiled with an aluminum finish, a Time Capsule-esque "lip," and a SATA optical drive that can be customized as a second HDD instead. Additionally, TechCrunch says it has three independent sources that confirm there's a large iPod touch is coming next Fall with a 7 or 9-inch screen. There's no indication if they expect a Macworld announcement here, but if true, we expect the cargo pants industry to react accordingly. Finally, and possibly related to the TechCrunch rumor, a Taiwan news site claims Quanta Computers is expecting to add Apple and Sony (is that you, Vaio P?) as clients for manufacturing netbooks in 2009. For those playing along at home, at some point next year we should expect a bigger iPod touch, a netbook, a smaller iPhone, a revised iMac, a revised Mac mini, and absolutely no love at all for the Mac Pro.

Read - Large form iPod touch to launch Fall '09
Read - Rumor watch: new Mac mini go for launch
Read - Quanta expects zero YoY NB shipment growth in Q4, 2008

[Apple ROKZ @ Dec 31st 2008 12:47PM]

super-sized ipod touch yea right it wouldn't fit fit in your pocket the ones right now barley fits in my pochet

[jake @ Dec 31st 2008 12:51PM]

girl pantz?

[aaron @ Dec 31st 2008 1:06PM]

HUH? How the Hell does it not fit in your pocket?

[1234321 @ Dec 31st 2008 1:13PM]

it fits fine in his pocket, just not in his pochet apparently

[Flashpoint @ Dec 31st 2008 1:13PM]

the current touch is alot thinner than my iPhone. I have no problems with it going in my pocket so unless you are wearing grirl's capri pants I have no idea what you're talking about.

I doubt they will make a supersized touch and then make a smaller iphone.

[Dan @ Dec 31st 2008 1:19PM]

Hipster skinny-jeans won't fit as much as real pants.

[dark star @ Dec 31st 2008 1:24PM]

a larger ipod touch makes perfect sense.
this is the reason why i havent purchased a netbook. in some ways, the ipod touch does a lot of things a netbook does but the screen is way too small to surf web comfortably.

[LEP @ Dec 31st 2008 1:37PM]

It would fit perfect in my man bag.

[Jason @ Dec 31st 2008 1:41PM]

skinny jeans are the debil!

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ Dec 31st 2008 2:00PM]

Look how much wasted space there is on the iPod Touch's surface. All you have to do is expand the screen a little, since there isn't an earpiece anyway. All Apple has to do now is put out a higher capacity Touch, so I can drop my Classic model already.

[jb @ Dec 31st 2008 2:20PM]

I think he meant poochet which is French for coochy.

[roach @ Dec 31st 2008 2:32PM]

According to Apple portable is not about size but the thinnest it is.

[Uncontrol @ Dec 31st 2008 2:34PM]

this comment thread is a pretty good indication of how out of touch with society engadget readers are!

[Michael Scrip @ Dec 31st 2008 2:46PM]

> this is the reason why i havent purchased a netbook. in some ways, the ipod touch does a lot of things a netbook does but the screen is way too small to surf web comfortably."

Yeah, they both browse the web. The iPod Touch fits in your pocket and gives you a somewhat decent web browsing experience. While a netbook is a "real" laptop, just smaller.

I could use both the iPod Touch and a netbook, but for different reasons. The iPod Touch would be my music player and occasional web browser, and the netbook would be my travel laptop. I'd much rather use a netbook, with a real mouse, to do any serious work. A netbook runs real computer applications, you can copy your digital camera memory cards to it, and does almost anything that a real laptop can do.

Even if Apple releases a giant glass tablet aka bigger iPod Touch, I'd still pick a netbook.

[poematik14 @ Dec 31st 2008 3:28PM]

Most of you geeks still wear cargo pants and denim shorts- you wouldnt know that the current trend in mens pants is to be as tight as possible.

[Jason @ Dec 31st 2008 3:43PM]

cuz we aint metro, we're geeks?

[Ray Von Sixx @ Dec 31st 2008 4:13PM]

Hell, I wear girl pants and can fit my Sidekick and my Touch in my pockets fine

[GoVegan @ Dec 31st 2008 6:07PM]

I don't recall any of the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew complaining about the PADD not fitting in their Starfleet uniform pockets. Seems like an ideal size for me to use around the engineering deck (read: living room/bedroom), and I can also take it with me on away missions (read: going to work by train) to use as an e-book reader.

[Apple ROKZ @ Dec 31st 2008 6:41PM]

i said BARLY not atoll

[mrChin @ Dec 31st 2008 8:10PM]

no, you said "barley". which i totally understand not fitting in your pockets. skinny jeans or not.

regardless, an iPod touch or my 160GB iPod Classic both fit in my skinnies, just fine, AND i still have room for my phone a pen/pencil and loose change. take off the leggings.

[CraigJ @ Jan 1st 2009 2:11AM]

envision the iTunes store selling e-books and re-evaluate. I have an iPhone, but if Apple starts selling e-books in the store I will definitely buy one of these. I read a lot, and I'd rather buy e-books than paper, but so far e-ink doesn't really work for me, and reading a book on the iPhone just isn't that fun after a few minutes.

Also, it seems like the perfect device to watch a movie or browse the web.

count me in.

[iSmoke,therefore emit death by breathing @ Jan 1st 2009 10:04AM]

why would anyone need an iphone AND an ipod touch?

[Ryan @ Dec 31st 2008 12:48PM]

...If it's supposed to be a big deal that the Mac Minis are going to have an aluminum finish, then what are they made of now?

[Ashwin @ Dec 31st 2008 12:52PM]

They're currently made of polycarbonate plastic, and part of the casing is aluminium.

[Don @ Dec 31st 2008 12:58PM]

Maybe it's just me, but the whole aluminum look is dull and bland. I never understood why they never offered anodized aluminum colors either.

[eggothewaffle @ Dec 31st 2008 1:22PM]

Because Apple wants you to think differently by having the same exact shit as everyone else (who are also thinking differently)!!

[dingotheband @ Dec 31st 2008 3:50PM]

The big deal about a full aluminum casing is that it should use the new laser-cut "brick" process. This means it should be cheaper, lighter, harder, better, faster, stronger, etc.

[Prokanda @ Dec 31st 2008 5:25PM]

mmm.. daft punk reference... nice.

[Justin @ Dec 31st 2008 10:26PM]

Don't try to over-analyze a rumor. Even if there is something to it, who knows what they meant. Personally, I'm hoping the white plastic is replaced with black glass. That would be a nice touch.

[gar1 @ Dec 31st 2008 12:53PM]

i've been waiting as im sure a lot of others have for a mac tablet, but this!!
whats the point in a larger ipod touch??
this has to be bollox .
i can see a mac tablet coming sooner or later but not with a touch interface surely!!
come on apple what we need is a proper osx operating system

[Homeboy @ Dec 31st 2008 12:52PM]

Unless it comes with 1-2 USB ports, has an open OS system and can be typed on I can't see the benefits of a super sized iPod Touch. UMPC, netbook or else dump the idea.

[Choppy @ Dec 31st 2008 2:07PM]

In the 2-Din dash of every car in the world. Make sense?

[Matthew C @ Dec 31st 2008 6:33PM]

Giant Ipod touch + Atom procesor + Keyboard for < $600 = apple netbook - which would be crazy popular even though it costs more than the rest.

make sense?

[ANTCEP @ Dec 31st 2008 12:51PM]

is it a mini touch or a giant touch, we will never tell

[1234321 @ Dec 31st 2008 1:15PM]

read the article, you'll be surprised what you can learn

[Jakob @ Dec 31st 2008 1:32PM]

read the comment, you'll be surprised what you can learn

[jb @ Dec 31st 2008 2:24PM]

is that like good touch, bad touch?

[iKurt @ Dec 31st 2008 2:31PM]

That's what she said.

[hitsthings @ Dec 31st 2008 11:05PM]

No.

[Tim @ Dec 31st 2008 12:54PM]

Um, MacWorld is less than a WEEK away.

[Mobius_1 @ Dec 31st 2008 1:30PM]

A week is less than a month, and is also less than a year. :P

[aardWolf @ Dec 31st 2008 2:23PM]

...but what we really want to know is... Is it less than a decade?

[garrenteed @ Dec 31st 2008 12:53PM]

Maybe they should just focus on the current touch's screen resolution, insane gaming device that it is. ha.

[Liquidretro @ Dec 31st 2008 1:01PM]

I was just going to buy 2 16gb iPod Touch. Should I wait? I dont really want a big one.

[Bill Jobs @ Dec 31st 2008 1:20PM]

Wait - they might release a software update that costs money if you had one already - like they did before. But on the ones they ship after the philnote would come preloaded with the update.

[Chris Are @ Dec 31st 2008 2:16PM]

I don't know about everyone else, but this new touch seems like their answer to netbooks. Perhaps i'm reading too far into things. Regardless, if the rumor is true, they won't have a 9" be the only available touch. But I'd still wait just to see what is revealed.

[FelipeCalderon @ Dec 31st 2008 7:02PM]

That's what she said.........

[Bigjimmy12 @ Dec 31st 2008 1:02PM]

Wouldn't a larger ipod touch be a "netbook" it would have storage... it would run a desktop OS (stripped) it would get on the web and do IM. Isnt that what a netbook does?

[1234321 @ Dec 31st 2008 1:22PM]

netbook being coined by intel, run on x86 OSes, and are not "stripped" of the x86 experience, they are infact more powerful can high end laptops from 6 years ago running the same OS (XP). The iPod Touch runs on an ARM architecture at has little in common with OS X even though Apple uses the same name.

If the resolution goes up, It's really spelling more trouble for high end PVPs from Archos and Cowon, and UMPCs and MIDs which are x86 but expensive relatively, than it is for netbooks

[Jason @ Dec 31st 2008 1:45PM]

"Yeah, you could put netbooks in there."