Mini Apple touchscreen turns up

Rumour mill kicked into overdrive

9 July 2010 16:48 GMT / By Paul Lamkin

Ah, there's nothing like a leaked Apple device to get people's tongues wagging. So what's been unearthed? Well, it's not much - literally. It's a 3 x 3cm touchscreen with Apple's copyright written all over it.

Tw.apple.pro has published photos of the component which it has supposedly got its mitts on from an Apple manufacturing insider. The component looks as if it has got a display connector and also a touchpad connector.

So what can it be for?

Well, Tw.apple.pro is predominantly in Chinese (or Taiwanese, excuse our ignorance), but even we can read the iWatch reference - so it clearly thinks Apple may be heading down the wristwatch route.

But there's also rumours doing the rounds of an iPod touch nano, a Shuffle touch, an iPhone nano or maybe even a very tiny iPad. Okay, that last one's not really doing the rounds - we made it up.

We're hoping for an iPod touch nano - although 3 x 3cm seems a bit small for that. It will probably turn out to be something mundane like a finger recognition system for future Macbooks or iMacs.

Only time will tell we suppose, but expect the rumour mill to go into overdrive with this one. Fanboys love a bit of speculation.