The new MacBook and MacBook Pro may be moulded by hand from a single piece of adamantium or whatever, but how do they size up to their previous versions? The new MacBook Pro actually has a larger footprint (X Y) than the old MacBook Pro, but it's also slightly thinner (tough to tell in person). But the new MacBook, on the other hand, has a nearly identical footprint (X Y), but seems much thinner than the old MacBook. And the numbers agree.

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It defies Apple convention. MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs and PowerBooks—those systems don the silver finish of aircraft-grade aluminium. iBooks and MacBooks? They can settle for plain old white.

That was, until today when Apple presented their redesigned MacBooks featuring the new "unibody enclosure" manufacturing process. So is a new finish and more rugged build enough to make the budget laptop feel like its premium counterparts? In one word, yes.

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Joining the MacBook Pro, Apple's MacBooks, their best-selling mac ever, also received a complete hardware re-tooling today, with rejuvenated hardware packed inside a brand-new aluminium case, thus putting one of the final stakes in the heart of white and black plastic in the computer line (the original plastic MacBook is still available, at a reduced $US999 price) and linking the consumer and pro notebooks under the same design vocabulary for the first time.

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As is always the case, this undercover iPhone pic of what appears to be the new Macbook Pro is too blurry to rule for sure one way or the other. But as far as spyshots go, this one's looking pretty solid. And just like with the presumed-fake-and-then-verified-true iPod nano leaked pics from last time (coincidentally also sent in originally by our friend JR here, who might need to lay off the cappuccinos), it matches what's been popping up in even more dubious pics over the last few weeks--a more rounded, piano-black bezel, Macbook Air-like keyboard and a large (although not glass) trackpad. We'll know for sure tomorrow at 10AM PST (4am Thursday AEST)--stay tuned until then. [Thanks, JR!]

Chinese blog MacX is showing some very legit looking pics of what they allege is the MacBook Pro casing today. We will have to wait for the MacBook 2008 event this week to see if it is real or not, but they are crystal clear and in line with both series of previous leaked images.

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New MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and probably an updated MacBook Air are coming up next week, at the Apple MacBook 2008 event. The MacBook and MacBook Pro are long due for a case redesign but, beyond that, little is known for sure. Here we have collected all the pieces of information we have about them. All the facts, the logical rumours, and the crazy ones, which we will keep updating through the coming days until the MacBook Event liveblog kicks off.

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Amidst a flurry of alleged pictures and some wise words of caution, another Mac notebook rumour has surfaced: the Inquisitr claims that, according to their source, Apple's new line of notebooks will start at $US800 and come in twelve configurations. To put that into perspective, the current range is made up of eight price points, the lowest being $US1099. A $US300 drop in MacBook prices or the likely possibility of an entirely new model are both tantalising, but some are finding reason to be suspicious:

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Taiwanese blog Apple.Pro has put out a couple more pictures that could be related to the upcoming Macbook Pro. We're not sure if they're real or not, but there are enough photos out there to at least mostly rule out Photoshop. While the new pictures resemble case images we saw earlier, it looks to be designed for a smaller laptop and lacks their speaker grills.

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Earlier this week we reported on a rumour about a new "secret" manufacturing technology by Apple. Supposedly code-named "brick", this "revolutionary" process would carve a MacBook shell out of a single block of aluminium. Business Week echoed the unconfirmed information, quoting the usual analysts and citing an Apple patent, implying that the rumour may be true. Today, Engadget published an alleged spy-shot claiming that it looks like a "fancy new MacBook Pro carved out of a single piece of metal." But does it? And does the Apple patent prove anything about this fabled process?

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It's been a while since an Asus product has rocked our world—we think the last time must have been the Eee—but the Atom-powered SSD-based Asus S101 looks amazing for its price—even better than we thought before. Just 1kg and a tapering 17.8mm thin (a bit thicker than the Air), its 10.2" LED screen runs at WSVGA (1024x600) resolution. And with 802.11n, ethernet port, Bluetooth, multitouch trackpad, 4-in-1 card reader, 20GB of free online storage and high quality speakers, the S101 packs plenty of useful features—though it only has 1GB of RAM and appears to have the same fatal flaw as the MacBook Air. Yes, the S101 uses a non-replaceable, 5-hour polymer battery.

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