Apple rumor mills are all abuzz with rabid reports of Apple coming out with an "ultra-portable" (or UMPC) Mac some time next year, according to a recent T3 story. The common guess is that it would be a tablet-styled Mac, with a cut-down Mac OS X running off flash memory. A "Mac Shuffle," maybe?

Could it be? We at QJ conduct our own line of speculation. We have a couple of touch-input patents from Cupertino - touchscreens are a core technology of tablet, pocket, and other UMPCs. We have this patent of a "multufunctional device" from them, too. We have that irascible technical evangelist Robert Scoble hinting at an Apple Tablet PC- although interpreting his hints tends to be even harder than interpreting Apple's patent applications.

On the other hand, the big news of the Mac Expo has been the iTV and the new iTunes. Now this isn't to say that all of Apple is focused on getting iTV to market next year. There could be more tricks left up Apple's sleeve that it has yet to lay down. Speculation over a tablet or pocket Mac have been rife for quite some time, however - T3 had a story as early as June about it, and we had one back in April - and it still would be nice to actually have a bit of insider information, though.

So how about it? A Mac-More-Than-Mini? A MacTablet? The PocketMac? It would be an interesting addition to the current Mac lineup. But nothing hard or firm out there yet to confirm this.