I still shed a tear at the close of an era of Steve-notes, and “one more thing”s.

http://gizmodo.com/5063281/is-steve-jobs-preparing-his-farewell

To start we have the announcement of the new Macbooks and Macbook Pros. Apple takes this opportunity to bring their visual style in line with the iMac, sporting a glossy black border around the screen. More importantly, they much rumored new aluminum case was unveiled making the laptop even more sturdy than before. The guts have also been given a large upgrade with a single NVIDIA chip in the Macbook and duet of chips in the Pro model allowing for tiered use of the chips to meet workload and power demands. Fans of the iPhone and Macbook Air will be glad to know the laptops also have gained a buttonless glass trackpad with multi-finger gesturing.

Among the other changes, Firewire has been dropped from the Macbooks, as well as the full size DVI port on the Macbook Pro. MiniDVI will be used through out and is also seen on the new Cinema Displays.

Now for the specs:

Macbook Pro

• Standard Model: $1999
- 15.4-inch screen
- 2.4GHz processor
- 2GB DDR3-RAM
- Geforce 9400M and 9600M GT
- 250 Gig HDD
- Super-Drive

• Better Model: $2499
- 15.4-inch screen
- 2.53GHz
- 4 GB RAM
- 512 MB on 9600GT
- 320 GIG HDD

Macbook

•$999 (Last generation), $1,299, and $1,599

- 13-inch Screen
- 2.0, 2.1, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 2GB SDRAM
- 160,180, and 250GB Hard Drives
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M

In a nutshell that about wraps it up. For all the dirt Gizmodo has given some great hands on reviews of the machines.

http://gizmodo.com/5063271/hands-on-with-macbook-pro-2008

http://gizmodo.com/5062885/hands-on-the-new-silver-macbook

http://gizmodo.com/5063291/hands-on-with-the-24+inch-apple-cinema-display

The report includes details of the mail outage caused by a server blocking certain members, even permanently loosing email. Also, some details of the launch difficulties, and as guessed, Apple failed to anticipate the level of traffic. Increasing server capacity and fixing over 70 bugs likely contributed to more reliable operation a couple of days later.

The page has an RSS feed, which I recommend MobileMe members use as you can see when new posts are made.

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2008 third quarter ended June 28, 2008. The Company posted revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $5.41 billion and net quarterly profit of $818 million, or $.92 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.8 percent, down from 36.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 42 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q3 2008 financial results conference call utilizing QuickTime®, Apple’s standards-based technology for live and on-demand audio and video streaming. The live webcast will begin at 2:00 p.m. PDT on Monday, July 21, 2008 at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsQ308/ and will also be available for replay.

Some salient points from the complaint:

… Psystar began selling in commerce a computer named the OpenMac which app runs a modified, unauthorized, version of the Leopard operating system.

… Psystar actions harm consumers by selling to them a poor product that is advertised and promoted in a manner that falsely and unfairly implies an affiliation with Apple.

Possibly their most important point:

Apple has never authorized Psystar to install, use , or sell the Mac OS software on any non-Apple-labeled hardware.

ZDNet has the details, plus a link to the complaint.

Server Admin Tools 10.5.3 contain remote administration tools, documentation, and utilities that you can install on a computer other than your server. This version is required to administer Mac OS X Server version 10.5.3 from a remote Mac client.