Apple is doing a live event to unveil new notebooks in Cupertino on Tuesday, confirms Engadget. It’s accompanied by one of the most unambiguous Apple teaser images ever, seen at right. (Guess they got tired of the overactive imagination of the rumor mill.) I expect this means one of two things:
1. Cosmetic changes, under-the-hood tweaks, don’t care that much. Hey, a pretty, new Apple laptop is all fine and good, don’t get me wrong. But PC notebook makers have in recent months rolled out new hardware improvements a lot faster than Apple, and often at a much lower price. That’s not to say the Apple don’t make a very good or even better deal … just that what generally happens is, looking at Apple’s lineup, improvements tend to get bundled together. Maybe I just hate the MacBook Air because it’s beautiful, I don’t know. So, I think this could be big news in the sense that people waiting to upgrade could be very happy, just not earthshaking news. Then again, what we could see is…
2. Multi-touch screens on the whole line. Now that could be interesting. Commodity touchscreens on laptops already appear imminent on PCs in general, so it’s not hard to see Apple getting into the game. And while many people rightfully point out that touch in a laptop form factor isn’t all that practical, for musical applications and live onstage use, it’s a dream.
All bets are off Tuesday.
Updated: Okay, so what we got was basically (1) — except that I missed the “and critical FireWire ports get Steved” part:
… on Create Digital Motion: New GPUs, Connectors; Non-Pro Changes and Did Apple Just Eliminate All S-Video, Composite Video Output?
… on Create Digital Music: Whither, FireWire? What the New Apple Laptop Port Changes Mean for Audio
For anyone who thinks Mac users are superficial and care only about form factor, ahem, we’re going to be talking about jacks. Got it?