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TECH CHECK VIDEO
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Tech Check
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Here's the text from today's live blog of the Apple laptop event. Start at the bottom of the page and work your way up to the last post.
2:03 PM EST: Event is over!
2:03 PM EST: Last question, on TouchPad. What about a touch screen on laptop? Jobs says Apple has experimented with that, but hasn't made a lot of sense to us.
2:02 PM EST: What about a net book from Apple? Jobs says it's a nascent market just getting started and we'll see how it goes.
2:01 PM EST: Question about all glass displays and glare. The vast majority, with a capital V, says Jobs, want this.
2:00 PM EST: Shannon Cross asking about costs of manufacturing. Tim Cook says reducing price by $700 is a good indicator of Apple's abilities, but new manufacturing will be expensive, but then trail off as the company learns more.
1:58 PM EST: Gene Munster asks about what will happen between sales of MacBook and Pro series and whether Jobs is worried about losing sales from one to the other. We'll see, he says, but doesn't seem too concerned.
1:57 PM EST: What about 17 inch MacBookPro? Still available, says Jobs. Being refreshed but still on sale.
1:56 PM EST: Blu-ray? Jobs says, it's a "bag of hurt," not from the consumer point of view, but the licensing of the tech is so complex." We're just waiting for everything to settle down before we burden the consumer with the cost of licensing, says Jobs.
1: 54 PM EST: Apple the first taking nVidia chip to market. Not exclusive, however.
1:53 PM EST: Jobs is back on stage. Opening up today's event to Q and A, but because earnings are a week from today, will not answer questions about the quarter just ended. 110 over 70. Steve's blood pressure! This is all I'm going to share on Steve's health today, he says! And we're not economists, so we won't answer questions on global economic slowdown.
1:50 PM EST: Showing a video now featuring Ive talking about the new designs. Which gives me a chance to offer up some perspective: $899 for the 24 inch Apple display seems very steep, considering the other displays on the market for so much less. Apple gets away with price premiums because of its cool factor and design and machine tolerances. But will the market bite in an economy like this one?
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It's clear the new MacBooks are screamers, and the $999 price is compelling -- especially for so many key advances. And the additional MacBook choices for a few hundred dollars more are intriguing. This holiday shopping season will determine whether Apple did enough to address consumer concerns about parting with their hard-earned cash. Lowering the price, adding more functionality is normally the right equation to increase sales in normal times. But these are hardly normal times.
My thought: this may indeed be just enough to keep Mac momentum going, but it's by no means the sure-thing the $899 price point could have been.
1:45 PM EST: But there are other choices for MacBook as well with some of the cooler features. A new MacBook will now sell at $1,299 with a 13.3 inch display, 2 GHz Intel core. So many key features from the MacBookPro but for $700 cheaper. Shipping today. The other one with faster chip and more storage will sell for a bit more.
1:41 PM EST: Five hours of battery life for the new MacBook as well.
1:40 PM EST: The new MacBook will feature the metal enclosure, faster graphics and LED backlit display. The price point may not be as aggressive as some had hoped, but it finally does get the MacBook below $1,000 and with the added features, it should be wildly popular without cannibalizing the more expensive MacBookPro.
Still, you have to wonder whether this is enough to walk that tightrope between lower ASPs, margins and what will sell in an economy like this one.
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1:38 PM EST: One more thing! The new MacBook. The best-selling Mac ever. The new entry price is $999.
1:37 PM EST: Apple also introducing a 24 inch LED backlit Cinema Display, featuring MagSafe, USB, and Mini Display. The biggest Apple has ever made. It'll retail for $899 and available in November.
1:36 PM EST: New MacBook Air. Will feature the new graphics chip from nVidia that will make graphics 4x faster. Now with a 120 Gig hard drive; 128 gig solid state drive as well. $1,799, with 1.6 GHz Intel chip, 2 Gig drive. At $2,499, the 1.86 GHz Intel chip and solid state drive.
1:34 PM EST: Jobs: We have a major push here at Apple to make our products much more environmentally friendly. Arsenic free glass, BFR free, Mercury free, PVC free, highly recyclable and reducing packaging by 37 percent.
1:31 PM EST: MacBookPro offered with solid state drive, accessible with the battery, on the bottom. And of course, 802.11n, Bluetooth, wireless. .9 inches, the thinnest ever. The first one, 15.4 inch display: $1,999, includes 2. GHz Intel Core Duo; 2 Gig memory. The $2,499 will feature a 2.53 GHz Intel chip and a 4 Gig hard drive. In stores tomorrow.
1:30 PM EST: Added new the new GeForce 9600M GT graphics chip. Offering BOTH chips. Five hours of battery life with the lesser chip, 4 hours with the bigger one. Oh, and its GeForce, not gForce, by the way.
Slot load SuperDrive, ethernet, FireWire, mini Display port for video out, optical digital audio out. Battery indicator now on the side.
1:28 PM EST: I just got my hands on one. Amazingly light. You almost can't believe it's metal. Or durable. Or economical to manufacture. But apparently it is.
1:26 PM EST: Going to rush tape of the new MacBookPro to our satellite truck to get this on the air. Showing the unibody base by passing it through the audience. "We need them back," Jobs says. Teams of hundreds of people have been working on this for many many months. "This is a tour de force of engineering," says Jobs.
1:24 PM EST: Jobs: We're introducing our new MacBookPro. The new device is "gorgeous," says Jobs. Super thin display. Precision unibody enclosure, LED baclit display, next generation graphics.
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1:21 PM EST: A new trackpad, 39 percent larger, made of glass, the entire track pad is now the button. You can get multi-buttons (right click button) via software. And there's multi-gesture support as well.
1:20 PM EST: "We are thrilled with the performance of this chip," says Jobs.
1:19 PM EST: Jobs is talking about nVidia, widely rumored to be the new GPU, the graphics processor unit, for this new line. "They've created something really great," dubbed the gForce 9400m. 70 percent of the die area is CPU, 30 percent is the chipset. 54 gigaflops, delivering 5x faster than the chips from Intel [INTC
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1:18 PM EST: Using the same principles for the new laptops. Jobs back on stage.
1:17 PM EST: The new laptop will start with a thicker piece of aluminum, and not the initial magnesium frame. He's getting into a level of detail here, complete with machining and everything else. Starting with a piece of aluminum weighing 2.5 pounds that ends up weighing a quarter pound. And that's what makes the Air possible.
1:14 PM EST: Pretty fascinating stuff, actually. Even though current 15 inch MacBook is best in class, we've been looking for a better way. And we think we've found it. Look no further than the MacBook Air, he says.
1:13 PM EST: Ive is going through specific design points of the MacBook, showing the internal frame composed of magnesium die-casting married to an aluminum piece. He's going level by level showing how these things come together.
1:11 PM EST: Jony Ive is now coming on stage, the legendary Apple designer. Again, very unusual to see him on stage. I can't remember the last time he did one of these. Jobs seems to be showing Apple's breadth of talent and bench strength.
1:10 PM EST: Total units Apple has shipped 7.1 million Macs through first three quarters of 2008. Surpassing ALL of 2007. Jobs is back on stage.
1:09 PM EST: Now controls 39 percent unit share in education, surpassing Dell[DELL
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1:08 PM EST: Unit share now at 17.6 percent in US retail. If you look at revenue share is over 31.3 percent. One out of every three dollars spent on computers in US retail is spent on the Macintosh.
1:07 PM EST: Cook: These are the reasons we attribute to Mac's momentum. This just didn't begin. Look at history: Mac has outgrown the rest of the market 14 of the last 15 quarters. "That's four years!"
1:06 PM EST: Retail stores also a key reason. Almost 250 stores now in 8 countries, greeting 400,000 visitors each day. 50 percent of the Macs they sell are to NEW Mac users.
1:05 PM EST: Talking about the Mac vs. PC ads as a key reason for Mac's success. "It struck a chord," he says.
1:04 PM EST: Showing off software, and compatibility. He's talking about life-long Windows users thinking about switching. Points to Vista from Microsoft [MSFT
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] as a key reason for Mac's success. "It's open doors for a lot of people to consider switching to the Mac."
1:02 PM EST: Showing desktops, the MacBook Air. Spotlighting Leopard operating system, "far ahead of Vista." This is unusual: certainly increasing Tim Cook's profile by letting him kick off an event like this.
1:02 PM EST: Cook: In our last reported quarter, 2.5 million Macs sold. Growing 2 to 3x market.
1:01 PM EST: Today's about notebooks, says Jobs. But he wants to cover the state of the Mac. Tim Cook is now on stage.
1 PM EST: The lights are dimming...Steve Jobs is now on stage.
12:58 PM EST: Hi all! Thanks for joining me on the LiveBlog. Steve Jobs should take the stage in about 9 minutes at which time he's expected to unveil the company's newest line of laptops.
There's been huge speculation about a sub-$1k MacBook, something I wrote about yesterday. But a new crop of speculation arose this morning trying to quash that idea.
Still, the folks in the crowd I'm talking to still expect that news to break, and if it doesn't, there will be a healthy amount of disappointment.
Meantime, Apple's [AAPL
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] Executive Briefing Center is full, Yo Yo Ma is playing on the speakers, and we're getting ready to start. Check back shortly. The event will begin shortly.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes