AppleInsider is knocking them out of the park with yet another huge rumor, this time of a new subnotebook on the way from Apple. Yes, we’ve heard it before, and details are still scarce, but AI is usually pretty accurate with their rumors and they seem quite sure that we’ll see this product sooner rather than later.

The new subnotebook–which could fall under the MacBook, MacBook Pro, or an entirely different line–is expected to be released around the time of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which runs from June 11-15, and would make a helluva surprise with a keynote announcement. The rumor suggests that the new portable will be smaller than anything Apple has released in recent years, so expect a screen under the 12-inch mark, something that hearkens back to the bygone days of the PowerBook. Also different is the lack of optical drive. Whether the machine will include a conventional hard drive is not yet certain. There have been past rumors that Apple is working on including NAND flash drives in portables to handle some functions, but it’s possible that depending on price and availability of adequately-sized flash drives, we could see a machine with only solid-state memory. That could potentially help speed, battery life, and size.

Though we don’t yet know if Apple is simply going to go for a fairly conventional 10-inch subnotebook, if anyone at Apple is listening, I’ve always had a bit of a thing for Sony’s PictureBook line.

Ever since seeing a gentleman using one of these on an airplane tray without worry of the person in front of him reclining and ruining his viewing angle, I’ve thought these could fill a nice niche. Perfect for the ultralight business traveler or note-taking college student, a complementary machine that could get by with no optical drive, limited ports, and a smaller solid-state hard drive. If they didn’t price it out of the water, it could do well, maybe even catching on in K-12 classrooms that were using iBooks.

What would you like to see out of an Apple subnotebook? How should it differentiate itself from the MacBook and MacBook Pro? Leave a comment!

Filed under: MacBook News, MacBook Pro News, Rumor