Of bricks, macbooks and frickin' laser beams

The big Mac rumor as of late was for a new thing called the "Brick" from Apple. Nobody was too sure what it was... a new notebook? A touchscreen tab? The latest iPhone update? Nope. If a recent report from 9to5Mac is to be believed, the 'brick' is a new manufacturing process Apple has put in place for the next generation of notebooks.

According to Seth Weintraub, the 'brick' itself is a single solid slab of aluminum which is machine cut by a combination of laser beams and water tools to form the entire casing for the Macbook. The process could allow for a seemless case design that does not require screws. From there, hyperbole reigns...

"It is totally revolutionary, a game changer. One of the biggest Apple innovations in a decade," writes Weintraub.

Perhaps we're all spoiled from Apple's recent rollouts, but I for one am going to be less than thrilled if Apple's big selling point for the new Macbook/Pro lines is a fancy case. New processors, more memory and an SSD option would be nice, for example.

Unless that case recharges the battery, displays system information while closed or brews a decent chai tea latte, Apple's going to have to do better. And I suspect they will.