New MacBooks and MacBook Pros, disappointment in the air…

That’s it! Finally, the rumor mills have stopped yammering with their rumors (rumors confuse me so much, and deceive when you actually see the real product) and the new notebooks are currently out for sale. Let’s start with the MacBook Pro. They really changed the design of the new MBP, adding a black glass contour around the screen (very similar to the iMac) that make the colors pop out. The keyboard has also adopted the black color, adopting the same keyboard as the old generation MacBook ( I liked the old MBP keyboard…). When purchasing the baseline model at 1999$, you get plenty bang for the buck: A 15 inch glossy display, a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (wow), 2 GBs of DDR3 RAM (why not 4 Apple, why?), a Nvidia GeoForce 9400 M and a 9600M GT which is the card you switch to for high performance, and finally, a 250 GB drive. You can also chose as an option to take a 128 GB SSD instead of the regular HDDs, and also as an option, upgrade your processor to up to 2.8 GHz which really gives you a kick-ass machine. I am a bit disappointed that the price has stayed at the same sky high price but I can understand why ( It’s supposed to be a pro machine, right?). I will probably take the baseline 1999$ model around end of January-ish. To sum it up, the MacBook Pro is what we expected it to be, the kick ass pro notebook machine, with the same outraging price ( I know, you must think I live in misery to care about price as much as I do). Now on to the new MacBooks, which got the exact same design as the new MacBook Pros and the price has increased by 200$. Another odd choice Apple made is to retain the old white MacBook (the one I currently have) and sell it a 999$ price-point. This move isn’t really the kind of thing Apple would do in regular times. I mean, Apple, couldn’t you just create a new sub-thousand dollar notebook for the masses? Instead of taking an old product and clearing the available stock? I overall liked the notebook related announcements, but still, some disappointment is in the air…

Steve Jobs Health

Another big announcement at the “Let’s Rock” event this Tuesday, is that Steve Jobs is actually alive, and from what we saw, in pretty good shape. At the beginnning of the keynote, he just turned away the rumors by the flick of a finger, using Mark Twain’s phrase “Reports of my Death are Greatly Exaggerated”, and just moved on with his keynote (Steve is just a genius). Steve Jobs’s appearance at the event really soothed Apple share holders, who were scared of his health issues, and of his possible death. So, what would Apple become if ever Jobs had to leave his CEO job or even worse, if he happened to die? In my opinion, Apple is a well oiled company and is something should happen to the CEO, there would be great people behind to take the company in relay. Some people have been exaggerating that if Apple would lose Jobs Apple would go down the drain, which is a bit far fetched. Of course, Apple would not be the Apple I know without Steve Jobs at the reign’s, without his genius mind thinking out new products and services, but saying that Apple would cease to exist would be very extreme. I mean, a company that has 73% of the mp3 player market will not just vanish into thin air, will it? So, for now let’s just enjoy Apple as it currently is and not worry about it’s stability nor it’s CEO’s health.

My Predictions for the September 9th “Let’s Rock” Event

I will take a shot at predicting what will be announced at Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event. I think we will definitely see a refreshed iPod Nano with a new design and more storage (up to 16GB). The iPod Software will also get a new interface which will be a free upgrade for old nano users and will be out of the box for new nanos. I don’t think we will see a MacBook or MacBook Pro speed bump or design change, which is long overdue. I think Apple will wait until MacWorld to announce new Macbook line refresh because of the new Intel chips shipping in 2009. iPhone and iPod touch Software 2.0.3 will be released with the Apple server thing that permits for example IM apps to send received messages without having the application running in the background. I also think the MacBook Air will get a 100$ price drop but no new design or speed bumps. Well this is pretty much it, will my predictions come out to be true, we will know soon enough.