That's right. I'm at Apple's campus to see the new MacBooks and whatever else that Apple's going to roll out today. We'll be casually liveblogging and stealing images from our sister site, MacLife. We'll be counterprogramming, looking at things from a more hardware focused end, while MacLife will corner the market on news from the Mac fan perspective. Read on for more info and refresh frequently, we'll be updating til the end of the event. (Protip: Logged in users see updates as they happen, while folks who don't log in only see updates every ten minutes or so.)

11:00 - It looks like that's it. There's a hands on area outside, so I'll take some shots and report back in when I'm back at the office. 

10:55 - They're doing a Q&A, with caveats, of course. They can't answer questions about current quarter or the SEC will yell at them. 110/70 is Steve's blood pressure. He's not answering health questions, and won't answer questions about the global financial meltdown.

Q1 - Can you talk about the relationship with Nvidia? Do you have first dibs?
Steve - They don't have an exclusive relationship, but they're going to be first to market.

Q2 - Blu-ray, Display Port ?
Apple - Display Port has big advantages due to the resolution limitations of HDMI. "Blu-ray is a bag of hurt" The licensing is complex that they're waiting until there's a reason to burden their consumers with it. Also iTunes is a nice solution for HD movies.

Q3 - Matte finishes on MacBooks?
Apple - No need, the vast majority of users are using glossy option, so no need to do matte anymore.

10:50 - Showing us a video of something. What is it? Jony Ive is back on screen. The edges are pretty amazing when they carve the thing from aluminum. I can't wait to get a little hands on time with it. I'm kind of surprised that they don't have a titanium upgrade for the MBP and Air. What's the little square barcode on the back of the inside? Must investigate further. This video, as Robbie @ Mac|Life says is "nerd porn".

10:45 - New MacBook Pro cost $1999. New MacBook costs $1299. I wonder if this will have 500MB of video memory that will make it Photoshop CS4 friendly? 2.0GHz Core2Duo, 2GB of DDR3, and 160GB drive. $1599 model is a bigger hard drive, a backlit keyboard a little more clock, and 4GB of memory. These are shipping today and are in stores tomorrow. Amazed that they're not going to roll out a sub-$1000 portable.

10:41 - MacBook is reduced price to $999. It's the most popular MacBook ever. The top three things they like on their MacBooks are metal enclosure, faster graphics, and LED backlit display. The MacBook line is getting these three things, on top of the white plastic MacBook. Rather than going under $1000, they're bridging the $1000-$2000 gap. New one is more of a MacBook Pro Lite than a MacBook. It's a 13.3 inch screen with the unibody contruction, GeForce 9400M, and LED backlit screen. Old plastic MacBook's must use the Intel graphics still. He keeps talking about the new gestures as if they won't work on current Macs... Is Apple really not going to enable these for old Macs with multi-touch?

10:40 - Oops, just lost my MacBook Air updates to a keyboard shortcut. MacBook air is getting bigger hard drive, new GeForce 9400M graphics, and option of 128GB SSD. Plus mini DisplayPort. Not too exciting, but same price. Also a new model that I missed the details on.

New Cinema Display, which is about time. The old one is about 4 years old, right? 24-inch LED backlit display. It has USB, MagSafe port, and mini Display Port. There's a 3 port USB 2.0 hub. Also integrates an iSight camera. $899. That's hella expesnive for a 24-inch panel.

One more thing is the Macbook.

10:35 - They're just as proud of the stuff they left out. They're leaving out toxic chemical, and think they're leading the industry. No arsenic in the glass, no BFRs, no Mercury, no PVC, it's recyclable, and the packaging is 37% smaller. It earned an EPEAT Gold rating. No idea what that means. I wonder if SUVs get them?

Something else is coming now

10:30 - GeForce 9600M GT is in the Macbook pro, along with the integrated chipset. The architecture lets you choose power or performance. The 9400M gives you 5 hours of battery life. The faster part gives you 4 hours of battery. The optical drive is a slot-load SuperDrive. I assume that means no Blu-ray, not that it really matters. Connectors are power, Ethernet, Firewire 800, 2x USB, Mini-Display port, and optical and analog in and out. Battery indicator is on the side too. I wonder if that means the battery isn't replaceable. Mini Display Port is going into everything they make, and supports 30-inch resolutions.

MacBook Pro will have solid state drive, batter and drives are replaceable by opening lid on the bottom. Seems like it might not be field switchable. 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1. 0.95 inches thick. Two models, no 17-inch. The first is $1999, 15-inch display. 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo (3MB cache). 2GB DDR3 memory, 9600GT with 256MB, and 250GB drive. Next model has 2.53GHz CPU, 320GB drive, and 512MB of video memory, and 4GB of RAM.

10:26 - Unibody design means MacBook Pro has half the major structural parts, and is a stronger design. They have the bodies here and are passing them around. Incredibly light, and very thin. No pictures though. Steve was looking at me as I went for my camera.

10:25 - Glass trackpad! The whole trackpad is the button, they're doing multi-button via software, just like the current trackpad. Now they've added four-finger gestures to complement the two and three finger gestures. They're showing the training videos now, to show people how to use the two, three, and four finger gestrures. Four finger gestures seem to be for OS level tasks, like app switching and Expose. New MacBook Pro. Big surprise there :) New MacBook Por is a little tiny bit thinner, with a balck edged screen full glass, LED display. Kind of a hybrid between current MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

10:20 - New graphics for notebooks. Nvidia is the partner, they're integrating the chipset and graphics in a single part. They've put the chipset and GPU on a single die, the GeForce 9400M maybe? 16 cores, 54Gigaflops of perforamnce (that's a little low). Five times faster graphics fhan the integrated graphics they've been using on the Air and the Macbook. 6x faster than Intel is pretty slow guys. Compared to the 8600M in the MacBook Pro, it's at about 55% of current discrete graphics. This is better than I initially thought.

10:18 - They've been looking for a better way to build a notebook. The new way, "a really signficiant breakthrough" happened during the design of the MacBook Air. It's very thin and light, no way to build a product that's that thin and light using the MacBook Pro architecture. Rather than start with a thin piece of aluminum (that's hard to type btw), they discovered that it's stronger and lighter if they start with a thick piece of the Al, then carve the support structure out of it, it's much stronger. It's very recyclable, so there's very little waste during the manufacturing process. Start with 2.5 lbs of Al, end with a .25lb piece of aluminum that's increadibly strong.

10:15 - Steve's back on stage. Talking about notebooks. They really are carving the notebooks out of solid bricks of aluminum. Jony Ive is the Senior VP of Design. He's going to talk about it. Showing how they build the current 15-inch MacBook Pro. The significant challenge is making the thin, light product strong and torsionally rigid. The aluminum enclosure makes a very small contribution to the notebook's overall structure. There's an internal frame, made of magnesium that's die cast, which are assembled into the aluminum bottom case. This is the basis of the strength of the notebook. There's a complex frame welded to the palmrest.

Steve doesn't look too bad... Still skinny, but healthier I think.

10:10 - Just kidding about the McMurdo... Mac's market growth over the last 4 years has outpaced the market. In US Retail, they've gone from single digit sales to 17.6% in US retail. Holy crap, that's amazing since they're only in the mid- to high- end for the retail market. 31.3% of revenue for US retail market. They've surpassed Dell to become the top supplier of education notebooks. 47% of market at a major university. That bodes well for the future.

10:08 - Oh wait, there's a sixth thing. 400k visitors to retail stores every day. They think the retail presence makes people feel better about switching and feel well supported. They opened a store in China and Australia. Also announcing Apple Store McMurdo Base.

10:05 - It's a sad testament to the state of the Windows market that Apple's able to boast about the Mac's compatibility with the rest of the world. Tim Cook says "Bootcamp removes the fear of switching to OS X". 5 reasons Apple thinks they've gained market share are Better Computers, Compatibilty, Vista, better software and Marketing. Apple's thankful that Vista has opened doors for people to consider thinking about the Mac. Apple's been the beneficiary.

10:00 Steve just came on stage, and quickly introduced Tim Cook to talk about the state of the Mac. 2x-3x growth, and he's saying their computers are better than anything else on the market. The stuff he's talking about now makes me almost certain that they're releasing a mass market SKU to hit the $500-$1000 market.

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