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
