Repair Company Releases Images Of iPad Case With Two Dock Connectors

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An Apple repair company called Mission Repair is arching eyebrows this morning with the claim that they have gotten their hands on the next iPad’s aluminum case, which they say has a port on the side for landscape docking.

Although we’ve seen a patent for an iPad with the ability to dock in both landscape and portrait modes before, this is the first time we’ve seen physical indication that Cupertino might be considering two dock connectors on the next iPad.

There’s a lot of reason to be skeptical here, though. For one, two dock connectors seems like a lazy and redundant solution to the “problem” of portrait-only docking. As Gadget Lab’s Charlie Sorrel points out, it’s more likely to be an SD Card slot than anything else: Apple doesn’t like redundancy.

More importantly, there’s the question of how a relatively small repair shop would have gotten their hands on the case of a product that is still likely six months away from being released. In fact, Engadget says that the case isn’t for the next-gen iPad at all, but “a rejected concept” for the current iPad.

We’re almost positive that Engadget has it right. After all, this isn’t the first time we heard that the first gen iPad was supposed to have two dock connectors.

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