July 7 - 10:40am EDT   Apple's next-generation MacBook Pro may have had its first glimpse today, says the Taiwan-area site Apple.pro. The report claims to have a photo of the new notebook's casing in prototype form as well as additional details, including items not pictured in the leak. The design appears to be more tapered like that of the MacBook Air and doesn't immediately reveal a backlit Apple logo, although this is most likely due to the incomplete nature of the case. [full story]

June 5 - 5:25pm EDT   One of Apple's principal manufacturers is shipping large quantities of an unknown item in advance of the former's WWDC conference on June 9th, Forbes suggests. The magazine notes that in May, Quanta Computer began shipments of a number of unidentified packages, through a port in Oakland, California and a distribution center in Fremont. More importantly, according to Forbes, a substantial amount of packages left the center Wednesday night, with as many as four trucks arriving for pickup during a single 20-minute span. [full story]

March 24 - 2:40pm EDT   A technology partnership between Quanta and ooVoo will produce the first plug-and-play, real-time, high-definition video chat and messaging system, the two companies announced Monday. The companies, in response to the continuing growth in HDTV sales and popularity of chat programs, plan to create a product that will easily turn a laptop computer, HDTV or desktop PC into a high-definition chat screen. Quanta Research Institute, a research center of Quanta Computer Inc., the world’s largest laptop maker, would develop the hardware, while ooVoo, a provider of real-time video communication over the Internet, would work on the interface and related software. [full story]

December 5 - 11:10am EST   Dell is near the end of developing its return to the handheld market through a smartphone, according to a hint in the latest issue of Forbes. Expanding on a leak from earlier this year, the Texas PC maker is allegedly coordinating the production of a phone with the Taiwanese manufacturing firm Quanta and is drawing on the expertise of recently added executive Ron Garriques, who previously headed the mobile division at Motorola before he jumped to Dell early this year. The new phone will focus heavily on music and video playback as well as Internet access, although the report is unclear as to whether the computer builder is customizing the interface or using off-the-shelf ... [full story]