MacBook rumors confirmed, debunked and educated guesses

MacBook rumors confirmed, debunked and educated guesses

With the Apple MacBook event slated to kick off in just a matter of hours, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has been able to confirm several of the rumors, debunk others and lay out some compelling guess for the rest. It’s definitely worth noting that Gruber is the same person who nailed Oct. 14 as the date for this event several weeks ago.

What to expect later today? According to Gruber:

• Newly redesigned MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
• The MacBook Pro images leaked earlier are real.
• The new trackpad has no button because the entire thing is a glass button that can be clicked.
• Matte finish will no longer be an option for screens, it’s all glossy. (At least for the Pro models.)
• The 17-inch MacBook Pro will get no design update. It could be getting phased out.

As for his educated guesses:

• The new MacBooks will look similar to the MacBook Pros but with 13-inch screens (instead of 15 inches).
• The MacBook Air will look the same, but will get spec updates — including a 128 gigabyte solid state drive.
• CPU speeds will largely be the same, but performance increases will come from the new Nvidia graphic chips.
• The MacBook Pro will get the two-GPU chip, which should work well with next year’s OS X Snow Leopard release.
• The $800 MacBook rumor was false.
• But there will be a sub-$1,000 MacBook, a $999 old-school white plastic one.
• The cheapest of the new ones will be $1,299, which Gruber thinks will enrage people (he’s probably right).
• The $899 mystery object, is a new 24-inch Cinema Display monitor. It’s LED-driven...

Excerpt:

• All connectors on one side.Unibody enclosure, Led Display, Next-Gen graphics
• Multitouch glass trackpad
• Mini Display Port connector
• All of the regular stuff: Backlit keyboard, built in isight and mic, stereo speakers, mag latch, sudden motion sensor
• “Unibody saves us half the parts”
• “Much more rigid, strong construction that we get”
• Lights are going up so we can see it.
• He’s passing it around. Show and tell!!

. . .

•  “A new way to build notebooks”
• Steve’s back on.
• In the first three quarters, they’ve already matched 2007 at 7.1 million sales
•  Surpassed Dell to become #1 notebook in the education sector
•  One out of three dollars spent on retail computers spent on Macs
•  Showing that one picture of the college classroom with nearly all Apple laptops
•  Revenue share: 31.3%
•  17.6% of unit sales in US retail
•  Outgrew the market 14 of last 15 quarters
•  Over 50% of sales are new to Mac
• 400,000 visitors to Apple retail stores each day

. . .

• Steve’s Blood pressure: 110/70

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