As equally tenuous a confirmation of last week’s Wall Street Journal report that the Apple Tablet’s enclosure would be made of a very Mac-conventional material indeed, this Reuters report, which says that the Apple Tablet will be a brushed aluminum unibody affair, and ship in Q2 of 2010.
According to Reuters’ sources, Taiwanese manufacturer AVY Precision Technology will begin producing the aluminum enclosures in February, while fellow Taiwanese display manufacturers TPK Solutions will supply the Tablet’s multi-touch panels.
“Production of the cases will begin in February, so everything points to a second-quarter launch right now,” Reuters’ source speculated. “It doesn’t take that long for the company to assemble the PC together, but a second-quarter shipment date is what we’re looking at now.”
That Apple would carve their tablet out of a block of aluminum isn’t a very notable prediction. While five years from now, Jon Ives might well scoop out and mold alloys of unobtanium into the geometrically perfect objects of design of the next generation of Apple products, brushed aluminum and monochrome plastic are the only materials Apple’s really bothering with these days. Still, the Reuters’ report show that the various divergent and fractured Apple Tablet rumors are finally unifying into a rumor comprised of specific, soon-to-be-verifiable details. We may not know what exactly it is, but one thing’s for certain: something’s coming.
