If you thought that you had a chance to get your hands on a great piece of Macintosh history, well you are officially out of luck. A few days ago someone put up images and info about an old 2007 prototype for a MacBook Pro that included an internal 3G wireless card with an extended antenna. The prototype was put on sale on the eBay auction web site. However, as MacRumors reports, that prototype has now been removed from its eBay listing after eBay received a "request" to do so by Apple.
The person who currently possesses the prototype MacBook -- who said he first got hold of it via a Craigslist seller -- says in a post on MacRumors" message board that he has not heard anything else from Apple and doesn"t know how to proceed. Before the eBay auction was pulled the MacBook prototype has a high bid of about $70,000. In the meantime the seller has posted up some additional photos of the MacBook 3G prototype that better show off the external antenna. The antenna only comes out about 2 inches from the MacBook when fully extended and is attached to the MacBook via magnets. That kind of design would suggest that Apple was concerned that the antenna might be knocked around when extended and having magnets holding the antenna keeps both the antenna and the MacBook itself from being heavily damaged if it was brushed by a passerby.
As we have mentioned before, Apple has never publicly released any of its MacBook notebooks with an internal 3G connection, unlike a number of Windows-based PC makers who have offered up a number of notebooks with such a feature.