Following the latest rumors on Apple's possibly upcoming MacBook Touch, speculation is starting to build up around the alleged Mac tablet, expected to ship as early as this fall. MacRumors points out to a recent post from Jason O'Grady (of ZD Net) which further confirms what everyone is hoping to see from Apple in the following months.

The MacBook Touch rumor was picked up a while ago by ZD Net's O'Grady (among others) who, without fail, pointed to a Mac OS X tablet launching this fall. All this was happening prior to Oppenheimer's bombshell at last week's conference call when Apple disclosed its Q3 results.

"This, to me, means that Apple is going to leverage the more than 100 patents (like MultiTouch) that they've filed for iPhone in a larger screen device that borrows heavily from iPhone," O'Grady wrote. "Think of a larger, media playing, eBook reading iTablet with 3G, GPS, and Bluetooth. Now think of it in 6, 8 and 10-inch screen sizes. This is when things get interesting."

While some were tempted to tag these prognostications as a bit far-fetched, at the time, the rumor was still in alpha. Not anymore. With recent hints coming from Apple's CFO himself, a Mac tablet seems like the next logical step from the Cupertino-based Mac maker.

The company started fueling Mac tablet rumors at Macworld last year, when the official statement said that they were "very excited" about a new project using new "technologies and features." As noted above, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer threw a similar bombshell during Apple's Q308 Financial Results Conference Call, July 21, 2008 (last week). Below is what the man went on the record with.

"We are working to develop new products that contain technologies that our competition will not be able to match. I cannot discuss these new products, but we are very confident in our product pipeline," Oppenheimer said.

The device is (allegedly) just a tad smaller than a MacBook display, but it has an iPhone-style glass surface, advanced gesture library, slot-loading SuperDrive, accelerometer, GPS, it (possibly) packs Immersion's haptic tech and is App Store compatible (but is able to run Mac apps too), according to a MacDailyNews tipster. The source also claims the MacBook Touch is launching this year, "by October at the latest."