Docking Station for Powerbook?

Sorry if this has been covered before.... Has there been any talk of Apple thinking about having a docking station for the PowerBook in any of the next revisions? I know you can get 3rd party docking stations, but an "official" one would be nice (plus the 3rd party one doesn't really cover ALL the ports, like the ones on the side of the PB).

It seems odd to me that they wouldn't have some sort of docking solution on what is supposed to be a "professional" machine.

Thoughts?

That's exactly my point. The 3rd party docking stations essentially have plugs that go into the existing ports with them duplicated on the back - the side ports are impossible to do without a side-bracket thingie. This is an unwieldy solution at best.

Most PC notebooks have a connector that covers all the ports. You slide the laptop into the dock - into the ONE connector and it replicates all the ports in the back of the dock. Just strikes me as a bit unusual that Apple haven't designed the PB around that concept - surely there are many computing pros who have a workstation at a desk (monitor, keyboard, network, mouse, printer, USB & Firewire peripherals plugged in) but would like the flexibility of being able to pick their machine up and go without having to bother with 8 things that are plugged in.

You COULD use an Apple display as a sort of quasi-dock, but that still doesn't cover the lot.

Well obviously I'm thinking future revision here Would be a bit hard to implement it in the current design, probably.

It would be a "nice to have" option. Not everyone would need or want one, but I wouldn't mind having one. Monitor, power, keyboard (with mouse attached), speakers, line-in, USB card readers, Firewire drives etc etc... They start adding up and it would be NICE to avoid handling all the plugs twice a day.

I guess we'll see (january? hoping for too much? )

out of interest - have ANY of Apple's previous notebook computers ever featured a docking station?