Hasta La Gadget!

Remember your first cellphone? If you’re old enough, that memory will include a pull-out antenna of some kind, a vestigial RF tail whose genes were passed down from walkie-talkies and field radios of old. And it seems that Apple, presumably before building its multi-zillion-dollar antenna lab, was also experimenting with pop-up antennae on its old MacBook Pros.

Here’s a photo of a heretofore secret prototype MacBook Pro with built-in 3G, up for sale on Ebay and currently requiring a bid of over $11,000 to win the auction. Externally, the Santa Rosa-based MacBook Pro looks like any other pre-unibody MBP, apart from a small slide-out rabbit ear in the top right corner of the lid. This extends to give better reception to the soldered-on SIM circuit board within. The inside is also full of prototype gear, from the red motherboard to the “evaluation” optical drive (going on the optical drives in the current MacBook Airs, I guess it failed the evaluation [**rimshot**]).

Interesting is the amount of polish that has gone into hardware which was destined never to see the comfort of an Apple Store display table. Not only is that antenna a perfect match for the lid, but the SIM card slot has a very professional-looking home in the battery bay (just like a cellphone).

If (and probably when) the MacBook Air gets a 3G radio, the antenna is much more likely to be sitting behind a plastic RF window like that in the iPad 3G, and the SIM will probably have a little pop-out drawer, also like the iPad 3G (and iPhone). Which probably only makes this glimpse inside Apple’s secret design lab all the more interesting.

Unreleased PROTOTYPE Apple Macbook Pro 15″ With 3G [Ebay via TUAW]

See Also:

• Antenna-gate
• Apple's Answer to Antennagate: Free iPhone 4 Cases
• IPhone 4 Loses Reception When Antenna Band Is Touched
• Antenna-Aid Makes iPhone Reception All Better