Both 9 to 5 mac (who broke this rumour first) & Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog have published their belief that “the Brick” does not relate to a new Apple product but rather a new state of the art production process for laptops. This process would involve the use of lasers & water jets to carve a “brick” (hence the codename) of aluminium into a hollowed out laptop shape into which the circuit boards & LCD display would be installed.
The process is believed to involve no screws in the produced product which in turn would lead to virtually no manufacturing defects during production, exceptional product quality & resilience. It should be noted that when Steve Jobs set up Next Computers a considerable sum of money went into the creation of a state of the art facility in Freemont, California which opened in 1990, so it should not be surprising that this route would be explored by Apple under Steve Jobs again. Basically, it would give Apple full control over the manufacturing of their own products with no reliance on their contract manufacturers which could lead to further innovative products coming out of Cupertino & would probably cut down on hardware design pics coming out ( a la the possible casing leak for the new MBP a while back ).
Again this is a rumour, but 9 to 5 mac have gotten their rumours (Macbook Air for e.g) right before & this would be a biggie for them if true.
Oct 14th can’t come around quickly enough (if Kevin Rose John Gruber was right).
Personal Update: Have had a further thought about this rumour of the new manufacturing process for notebooks by Apple. The start up costs would be quite high although the learning curve would lead to lower production costs in the long term ( hence last month’s lower margin declaration over the next few quarters given at analysts conference call by Peter Oppenheimer which may be related). However, how would you get to the battery if you need to put in a spare if it’s a seamless casing ? Not a lot of consumers would be willing to slide out the innards of this notebook just to change the battery & to create separate battery section would lead to loss of seamless design.
Here’s hoping Apple find an innovative way around any potential stumbling blocks.