14 DAY TRIAL // Without a doubt, Apple is set to unveil its new MacBook and MacBook Pro models today. It was still unclear whether or not Apple would be revamping its laptops this month until last week, when the company started sending out invitations to a “notebook” event. The invitation cards bore the message “The spotlight turns to notebooks,” and showed the silhouette of a Mac portable, thus we cannot but bet all our money on some exciting unveilings today.
So, what should we expect from Apple's Town Hall event today? For starters, a redesigned 13-inch MacBook is said to pack chipsets from NVIDIA's MCP79 platform. AppleInsider cited people familiar with Apple's plans as saying that the company was adopting NVIDIA's MCP79 as a substitute for Intel's Centrino 2 "Montevina" platform, since it offered support for the same 1066MHz front side bus, optional DDR3 memory and PCI Express 2.0 interfaces. The total footprint of such a mainboard is also consistent with the small chipset design from NVIDIA.
Proprietary features such as DriveCache, which uses flash storage to speed up loading times, and Hybrid SLI, which increases battery life, are just a two of the noteworthy aspects surrounding NVIDIA's new platform. Just as important is probably the fact that NVIDIA's MCP79 also boasts Blu-ray support. Apple is believed to support Blu-ray in its next maintenance and security update for Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5.6. Since the MacBook Pro already uses faster, dedicated graphics solutions, the high-end portable Mac is likely to receive the GeForce 9600M graphics chip.
Also last week, a rumor-ish site posted three rather small images of what appeared to be the case of a new MacBook. Despite the strong similarities with previous leaks, the images depicted a case clearly intended to house a smaller screened laptop, sources suggested. The case showed an observably larger trackpad, similar ports and support for an optical drive. A MacBook Pro case emerged a few hours later. Both case models appeared to confirm ongoing “Brick” rumors tied to the way Apple manufactures the cases.
The latest leaked image of a next-gen MacBook, published by Engadget, comes via the same source that previously provided authentic photos of Apple's fourth-generation iPod nano, days before the company unveiled it. AppleInsider believes the image was taken at the Apple Town Hall, on Apple's Cupertino campus during a product briefing. More on this later on.
So, hopefully, that gives you an idea of what Apple's new MacBooks might be like. As for the Town Hall event, we'll be making sure you get the latest updates coming from Steve Jobs' mouth live, so stick around.
