Bites from the Apple: Final Pre-Event MacBook Rumors

Today's the big day as Steve Jobs takes the stage at 10am PDT, and expectations have been running high for the last week (if not longer). Many have been salivating over the possibility that Apple would be releasing a $900 MacBook, a great price point for an economic landscape that continues to surprise. But MacRumors is deflating some of that excitement with its reporting that the $899 product is likely an LED Apple Cinema Display and not a low-end MacBook. Fie. Expect Apple stocks to tank harder then they usually do after a launch event.

As for the laptops, John Gruber has an excellent wrap-up of the various rumors over at Daring Fireball, including MacBooks made of single-piece aluminum frame with buttonless glass multi-touch trackpad--just press the pad it to click--and Airs updated with larger hard drives. Gruber notes that processors don't get too much of a kick, but that there are some interesting additions to the video cards:

What is new with regard to performance are the video cards: all these new MacBooks — regular, Pro, and Air — ship with the new Nvidia 9400M GPU. It’s apparently a screamer performance-wise, especially compared to the Intel integrated graphic chipsets that shipped with previous MacBooks and MacBook Airs...

In addition to the 9400M, the MacBook Pro sports a second GPU, the Nvidia 9600M GT.

Check back here around mid-day (Pacific time), when we'll wrap up what gets unveiled.

--Agen G.N. Schmitz