The most popular rumour floating around as to what the big announcement will be at Macworld Expo is an ultra-portable ultra-thin MacBook. The screen is to measure in the neighbourhood of 12.1″, is said to not have an optical drive (bye bye, DVD and perhaps Blu-ray?), and will move to flash-based hard drives (faster and no moving parts). This did not excite me. For one, I would want a bigger screen. The first (and only) laptop I got had a 14.1″ screen. I would definitely not want anything smaller than this for photos, image-editing, and spreadsheets. The lack of an optical drive would also be a problem because I would want as few peripherals as possible. Without an optical drive, I wouldn’t be able to rip CDs, burn discs, play games (if I wanted to), or watch movies. The flash-based hard drive would be welcome because it would be faster, consume less energy, be quiet, and not get heated. But then Wired went ahead and released these details and this mock image:

Courtesy of Wired.

That thing looks très sexy. Can’t wait to hear what the big announcement is tomorrow!