BGR.com is reporting that their Apple sources indicate that the brand new MacBook Pro laptops will be available in the next two weeks, while Apple stores are set to start getting shipments in of them in the “coming days”. The goodness that comes with this report are the expected changes to the new MacBook Pros include a larger glass trackpad, weight in at around a half-pound lighter than current models. Something interesting that BGR notes [something that doesn't make sense to them] that the OS will be loaded onto a separate internal 8-16GB SSD with everything else remaining on the regular drive.

[Thanks to Boy Genius Reports for the news].

Jim Dalrymple of The Loop reported that a December release date is too early, though he is still told Apple intends to meet the deadline that they have set for themselves of 90-days which puts it in Late-January.

The Mac App store was announced back in October during the “Back to the Mac” event which means Apple still has a good bit left before their 90-day deadline. It’s not all doom and gloom though as there is news coming out on the store itself.

Apple issued a notice to developers that unlike on the iOS, trial versions of software/Applications would not be allowed in the App store. Apple citited that the developers website is the best place to provide demos, trials, or betas of the software while the Mac Apple store was for applications that were fully functional.

For the developers out there, The Mac App developer program costs $99 per year which is a mirror of the iOS App developer program, the submission guidelines and policies also mirror the iOS App store.

The Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student edition will bring you an updated version of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint which will set you back about $150 from Apple which is for the “Family Pack” which allows you to install it on three Macs! While the Microsoft Office for Mac Home/Business edition will bring you an updated version of Outlook, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. This version will set you back around $200 for a single license but if you would like two licenses then it’ll cost you around $280 from Apple.com

You can head over to Apple.com and order it, right now!

Photo Credit: Apple.com

If you thought all Apple would announce was new iLife and Mac OS X Lion, you were wrong as there was just… one more thing. Apple presented today at the live keynote speech, the brand new MacBook Air.

The new MacBook Air will feature all flash storage, multi-touch trackpad, a long lasting battery which will allow up to five hours of power on the 11-inch model and up to seven hours on the 13-inch model. It will also feature a widescreen 16:9 ratio and resolution greater than the typical 13-inch notebook while the 13-inch Macbook Air will feature a screen that “wows” with a resolution of a typical 10-inch notebook. If the screen isn’t enough then let me be the one to inform you that it will feature a FaceTime camera! That’s right, FaceTime is being brought to Mac and is available to download (beta version) starting today. Now, you can chat via FaceTime to those with an iPhone 4 along with the iPod Touch and of course other Mac users.

The new MacBook air isn’t going to run cheap though, so, I have broke it down into each model so you can decide which model you want (or need). The 11inch model with 64GB will set you back around $999.99 which gives you 64GB of flash storage, 2GB memory, and a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor. Now, if you think you will need more storage you can upgrade to the 11-inch with 128GB model which will have the same processor and memory as the 64GB model but will give you more flash storage. If you think bigger is better, then there is an option for you with the 13-inch model. There are no differences from the 11-inch as far as the memory and processor goes but the major difference is the size of Flash Memory. You can score a 128GB model for $1,299 or you can go big to the 256GB model for $1,599.

That is the new MacBook Air… or… you could just buy an iPad. I’m just saying!

UPDATE: Apple.com has an option for you to upgrade the new MacBook Air to 4GB of memory!

Apple unveils “the thinnest notebook in the world” – the MacBook Air. Apple went and looked at most of the thinnest notebooks – Sony TZ series, for example and tried to distill the best of all of them –

• ~3 lbs
• 0.16 to 0.76 inches thin, 12.8 inches wide and 8.95 inches deep
• 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display that has a 1280 × 800 pixel resolution
• full sized MacBook-style black keyboard with Ambient light sensor
• built-in iSight
• multi-touch trackpad (Move a window by double-tap and move. Rotate a photo by pivoting your index finger around your thumb)
• 80GB drive as standard, 64GB SSD as an option
• 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo as standard chip which operates with 4MB of on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed, and uses an 800MHz frontside bus (1.8 GHz as an upgrade)
• 45w MagSafe
• 1 USB 2.0 port
• Micro-DVI
• 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1/EDR
• 5 hour battery life
• 2GB of 667MH DDR2 SDRAM

The MacBook Air runs from 0.76″ to 0.16″. The thickest part of the MacBook AIr is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony TZ series. So thin it fits in a manila envelope. This crazy thin MacBook is silver, got a camera with more rounded edges.

Fullsize, 13.3″ widescreen display. LED-backlit display saves power, gives bright display, instant-on the minute you open it. There’s a built-in iSight camera, and a fullsize MacBook-style black keyboard. “Perhaps the best notebook keyboard we’ve ever shipped.” And it’s got a backlit keyboard with an ambient light sensor (previously a MacBook Pro-only feature). Multi-touch gesture support on the trackpad. There’s a preferences pane that lets you turn on a bunch of different gestures and it gives you a video that shows you what things do. Double-tap and then you can drag the cursor around. Pan around a large photo with two fingers. Rotate with a two-finger interface, like turning a dial. Three fingers lets you pan through photos, and of course there’s a real pinch interface for zooming in or out.

Hard drive is a 1.8″ 80GB (with an option of a 64GB solid-state disk). It’s about the length of a pencil. Amazing feat of engineering and there is no compromise on performance. Core 2 Duo chip on the board at 1.6GHz standard with an option to go to 1.8GHz. They asked Intel to consider something: Apple wanted the chip, but needed the same die on a smaller package. So Intel engineered the same chip but made it 60% smaller.

What do we do with optical drive?

Movies, install software, backups, burn music CDs. Here’s why we don’t need to do that: wirelessly rental movies, most of us have iPods instead of CDs, for backups Time Machine and Time Capsule to wirelessly backup.

So what about installing software?

Going to do that wirelessly too. New feature built into MacBook Air OS called Remote Disk, under Devices. It’ll show you all the Macs and PCs in the area with special software (Macs or Windows machines). You can ask to borrow a machine’s optical drive. Once they’ve accepted, you can see what they’re disc is. A PC can even read a Mac disc with this special software. Click on it, and it’s just like having a local optical drive. “That’s how we’re going to install stuff. Wirelessly.” Don’t think users will miss optical drive.

They didn’t want to compromise on battery life. With wireless turned on, they still eked out 5 hours of battery life. So, a 3 lbs., 0.16″-.76″ thickness, 13.3″ fullsize display, fullsize keyboard (backlit), multi-touch gestures, iSight camera, 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of memory, 80GB hard drive (64GB SSD optional), 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and Magsafe connector — price starts at $1,799.

Apple is taking pre-orders today onwards and will ship them in two weeks.

The MacBook Air has a fully recyclable aluminum case. It also has the first mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass. All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free. And the retail packaging is 56 percent less volume than MacBook packaging. Helps with energy for transporting and disposing of materials. MacBook Air joins MacBook and MacBook Pro, “best note books in the industry.”

Visit;

• MacBook Air
• MacBook Guided Tour
• View the MacBook Air Ad
• Image Gallery of MacBook Air at Gizmodo
• MacWorld’s details on MacBook Air

More power with less power
Inside the new Mac Pro is the latest technology from Intel – Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors. These processors run at blazingly fast speeds up to 3.2GHz.

Cache count
A huge amount of L2 cache — 12MB per processor — keeps frequently used data and instructions close to the processor cores and improves overall performance. 6MB of cache is shared between pairs of processor cores, allowing an individual core to use all the available shared cache at any one time.

Built at full tilt With the fastest Xeon architecture available, the new Mac Pro features 1600MHz dual independent frontside buses. These 64-bit buses give each processor a direct connection to the system controller and deliver improved processor bandwidth of up to 25.6GB per second — 20 percent greater than the previous Mac Pro. With a new system architecture, speedier system buses, and fast 800MHz DDR2 fully buffered DIMM memory, Mac Pro memory throughput is up to 1.6 times faster than before. Every Intel Xeon processor features an enhanced SSE4 SIMD engine. Capable of completing 128-bit vector computations in a single cycle, SSE4 is ideal for transforming large sets of data, such as applying a filter to an image or rendering a video effect.

Smarter memory
The Mac Pro incorporates a 256-bit-wide, fully buffered memory architecture with Error Correction Code (ECC), which corrects single-bit errors and detects multiple-bit errors automatically. These features are especially important in mission-critical or compute-intensive environments. Apple designed a more stringent thermal specification for the Mac Pro FB-DIMMs, so the internal fans spin at slower speeds and keep the system quiet.

Prices for the Mac Pro start at $2,799 for a machine running two 2.8-GHz quad-core Xeons with 2GB of memory, the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card and a 320GB SATA drive. At the top of the configuration line, a machine tricked out with two 3.2-GHz processors, 32GB of memory, the Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 graphics card, a RAID card and four 1TB internal drives prices out at a whopping $18,199. The extra RAM alone adds $9,100 to the bottom line of that machine. The Mac Pro comes with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, Apple’s newest client operating system.

Xserve

Along with the new Mac Pro announcement, Apple also refreshed its Xserve server to include the same 45nm Penryn-family Xeon processors, the first time since August 2006 that it has punched up its 1U rack-mounted server. The Xserve, which starts at the same $2,999 as its base-line predecessor, comes with an unlimited client license edition of Leopard Server, boasts three drive bays and can be equipped with up to 32GB of memory. For $2,999, buyers get a server running a single 2.8-GHz quad-core Xeon, 2GB of memory, an 80GB SATA drive and dual Gigabit Ethernet on board.

The new Xserve is actually the more important of the two systems, argued an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc., because it “draws attention to the Leopard Server operating system’s capabilities as a small-business or departmental server for organizations with limited IT support.” While both new models significantly improve on characteristics of the machines they replace, the analyst said the Xserve and the Leopard Server operating system make a more compelling case.

Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard features a stunning new look across the entire system including a sleek new Dock with Stacks, a simple way to quickly organize and access your files. You can use Cover Flow to see your files in the Finder and browse through them like you browse through album art in iTunes. Quick Look gives you instant, full size previews of your documents, images and movies without opening an application. And Time Machine provides an effortless way to automatically backup everything on your Mac. These innovations plus Spaces, Boot Camp and major enhancements to Mail and iChat, make Leopard and its more than 300 new features the richest release of Mac OS X yet.

The program ends on January 26, 2008. Orders must be postmarked or faxed January 26, 2008, so order your upgrade now.

Apple have released a MacBook Pro Software Update 1.1 which fixes the responsiveness issue on MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook computers.

The Mac OS X 10.5.1 update is required before installing the MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update 1.1.

A Mac empowers you with advanced capabilities and a new level of confidence. You can unleash your creativity. Differentiate your business and build your brand. And work from almost anywhere. Without worrying about your technology.