“According to reliable information, Apple will not follow the current market trend (by producing netbooks with screens about 10.2 or 10.1 inches in diagonal length.) Instead, Apple will produce screens with about 9.7 inches in diagonal length. Touch screen will be installed. Wintek will be the main manufacturer of the touch screen.”

Beyond screen size, there are no other specifications mentioned in the report. But it does include a price: $800. Which is $300 more than the $500-piece-of-junk price point Apple CEO Steve Jobs cited when he dismissed netbooks last October. “There are some customers which we chose not to serve,” Jobs said at the time. “We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.”

But will it allow Apple to ship an $800 one? Perhaps something with a P.A. Semi chip? Something that runs App Store apps and offers a sort of middle ground between the iPod touch and the MacBook?

UPDATE: Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster just weighed on these rumors in a research note. His thoughts, below:

On 7/13 Asian media reports suggested Apple is planning a tablet/netbook in Oct-09. Last week we spoke with a Taiwanese component supplier and continue to believe that Apple will launch a tablet, not a netbook, by early CY10. … We expect [it] to be a touchscreen device in the $500-$700 range (between the iPod Touch and MacBook).

[Image Credit: Adam Benton]

One of the investments we make is to introduce new products that initially cost more because they deliver an entirely new level of value to the customer. Then we ride the cost curves down with value engineering and volume manufacturing, leaving us far head of our competitors. We have some of these types of investments in front of us that I can’t discuss.”

– Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, July 21, 2008

The media will gather tomorrow at Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters for an invitation-only event–presumably about updates to its MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. And as with every Apple (AAPL) product launch, tomorrow’s has been preceded by feverish speculation about what form, exactly, those updates will take. Among the rumors currently making the rounds:

• Apple will uncrate a new line of MacBooks whose cases are carved from a single brick of aircraft-grade aluminum.
• Apple’s refreshed MacBook line will include a machine priced at below $1000, perhaps even as low as $800.
• The new MacBooks will feature glass, multi-touch trackpads and LED-backlit displays.
• They’ll swap out Intel’s chipset–not the central processor–for Nvidia’s MCP7A, which reportedly blows the doors off Intel’s G45 in the graphics department.
• Blu-ray will be offered as an option on high-end models.
• Finally, Apple’s new line of portables will include the unmatchable “state-of-the-art new product” to which Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer and COO Tim Cook referred earlier this year, and that product will be a tablet. Something along the lines of the “MacBook Touch” described by MacDailyNews back in July.
  

  Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like but fuller-featured multi-touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X. This is why they bought P.A. Semi. Possibly with Immersion’s haptic tech. Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelerometer. GPS. … App Store-compatible, able to run Mac apps, too.”

An interesting spread of rumors, some quite likely, others improbable … and yet entirely plausible because, after all, it’s Apple we’re talking about. We’ll find out which of these proves true tomorrow at 10 a.m. PDT. I’ll be covering the event live, so be sure pay us a visit tomorrow.

A fair point, and one that’s been made here and elsewhere a number of times already. Worth noting here as well, is Munster’s claim that a MacBook Touch, iTablet, iPad, or whatever you want to call it, is unlikely this year. While the analyst believes such a device exists, he thinks it’s more likely to debut in 2010. “… Ultimately, we expect Apple to develop a full touchscreen MacBook, although not until the technology has fully matured over the next two-to-three years,” he said. “We believe multi-touch is a core differentiator of Apple products, and Apple has adequately protected its innovations in order to maintain a leading edge.”