Blog's from the Bush

Things that didn't turn up include:

• an $800 MacBook (turned into a new 24" Cinema Display)
• a netbook MacBook... apparently its a big and growing market (although I doubt Apple will enter this space in the same way as the rest of the market)...
• iLife and iWork 09 (admittedly this was never a real contender)
• updated AppleTV, updated Mac Mini, HDTV's with built-in AppleTVs (all fringe rumours really)
• and surprisingly the Unibody 17" MacBook Pro (although this may be coming a little later)

On the upside Apple did gave out some other positive news in the event. The first one to strike me was the somewhat quiet way in which Apple announced that they were selling nearly 20% of notebooks in the US retail market when looking at actual unit numbers. Think about that for a second that's nearly 1 in 5 laptops sold in the US to retail customers are made by Apple, in 2002 they were lucky to sell 6-7% of the laptops (or less than 1 in 17).

Interestingly it seems that even though you have price parity in the Mac Books and Mac Books Pro's for equivalently configured PC notebooks this hasn't hurt Apples revenue either. Looking at these statistics you can only read it as being Apple has an average margin that is 72% more per unit than the rest of the PC marketplace. Given Dell's abysmal recent quarter, I wonder how Michael Dell feels about that?

I imagine by now that you've all had your tech lust sated by the new MacBook Pro's and their updated little siblings the MacBook.

Let's have a look at these "Top 3 Mac Book requests":

• metal enclosure
• faster graphics
• LED backlit displays

Metal enclosures - hmmm - so people have MacBook Pro envy and want the metal enclosure or is there a perception that the all metal MBP bodies are more robust and more likely to survive trips to school in a backpack?

Faster graphics - this is a no brainer, just think of all the World of Warcraft people that would love a cheap sexy notebook that they can run their new Death Knight on! Oh I mean do their school work on – Mum I need the faster graphics to help MS Office work at a reasonable speed! In fact this would be a valuable update for the Mac Mini - it's the only reason I'm not buying more Mini's for our gaggle of children.

LED backlit displays - really? OK whatever floats your boat, there is definite appeal in low power, faster screen start times and "more pop" in a screen's colour.

Interestingly these changes are pitched by Jobs as being what the customer has asked for - are these subtle changes in pitch about a newer more caring Apple? (Really a return to the old days it's only been recent years that have seen Apple come across as arrogant - at least in the latest Jobsian reign). If so will we see more popular requests being acted on by Apple?

Will the Mac Mini finally get an update to faster graphics and processor?

Will the AppleTV get a PVR option or an update that supports external storage?

Will the Apple Tablet finally be created?

Nice as it would be I doubt Apple is going to give us everything people ask for... they'd just be another PC maker out there with to many product lines that aren't best of breed - if they did. Maybe, some of them though make sense like updated Mac Mini's and software/hardware updates to the AppleTV to natively support more/external storage.

Well another event is gone, time to start the count down to the next event - can't be to far away after all it's only 6 weeks to Thanksgiving & Black Friday in the US and that's traditionally a big time for Apple across the entire product line. We have new iPods, new MacBooks and MacBook Pro's so that only leaves a few things to freshen up... and you can bet they will still have something in-store for the traditional Mac Mecca in San Francisco in January 09.