First espied by the good folk at AppleInsider, close scrutiny of Snow Leopard reveals that a separate control panel is being constructed by Apple for 3G devices. Putting two and two together, the site has posited that 3G broadband compatibility will indeed be built into forthcoming Macs. It’s not quite the smoking gun were looking for, but it’s not far off either.

The news follows last week’s revelation that Apple was advertising for a Communications QA Engineer, whose duties are to include testing 3G Wireless WAN. Now, after the posting was interpreted all over the net as evidence for Apple’s plans, the notice has been pulled. You can read into that what you will, but we’re firmly of the opinion that such Cold War-style secrecy from Apple, combined with the new 3G operating system, can mean only one thing. And that’s that broadband-embedded Apple laptops are just a matter of months away.