“While Intel is obsessed with pushing their Ultrabooks into the market to attack Apple’s MacBook Air, Apple is working on producing a thinner MacBook Pro for road warriors who need the convenience of an optical drive,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.

“Apple’s latest invention describes how they propose to minimize the mechanics of an optical disk drive so as to produce a thinner MacBook Pro design in the future,” Purcher reports.

Read more in the full article, including Apple’s patent application illustrations and diagrams here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Brawndo Drinker" for the heads up.]