That 17 Laptop is a thing of beauty, no doubt. But we have some reservations.  First of all, the five years of battery charges couldn't have been tested (tech didn't exist five years ago).   Lithium Polymer might age poorly or differently in different conditions.  We are willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt but know we have been dealt a bit of a wild card.

Next, that enclosure doesn't just enclose the battery but it also encloses the hard drive (see no seams in video below).  And you only have a few (Apple only) options out of the box.  The biggest drive you can walk away with is a 320GB.  You can easily replace an Apple drive on a 13 or 15 with one of the many 500GB 2.5 inch SATA drives out there.  Hrmmmph. 

Apple also offers SSD drives in 128 and 256 GB sizes for $500 and $900 respectively.  We'd also like to replace the SSD if/when we choose to.  In a couple of years into that five year battery life, bigger SSDs will cost much much less.  It would be nice to be able to upgrade without major surgery. (more below)

Frankly we like to see a little more hardware at events but the 17 inch MacBook was pretty close to our description last week.  The $50 matte version should make people both happy and sad - as wil lthe internal long life battery.  We'd be lying if we said we didn't want one...with 8Gb (will we be able to up our smaller MacBooks to 8Gb)?   No Mini or iMac however was rough.  We have a feeling they are coming.

iLife and iWork are both looking pretty exciting.   iWork.com is pretty close to what we envisaged.  There were lots of gray areas where we missed some stuff but we think we got the major gist of it across.  GarageBand learn-to-play is exactly what we had heard.  And the Magic hint?  Cool transitions in iWork.  They are Fun!

iTunes.  The end of the DRM era.  Now we don't have to visit Amazon (but probably will continue for the dealz).  Amazon still beats Apple on price but iTunes is more convenient.

Apple Stock isn't really reacting (update - whoops - it is tanking).

Overall however, we were left....wanting...although the Macrumorslive (best feed out there)  getting hacked was entertaining.  And obviously we have an Apple Mac hardware event coming up.

We'll put up Apple's videos as they become available.  What did you think?

In case you needed a reason to be excited, Andy Ihnatko seems to be a fan of something...or preparing for a epic buzzkill.

Oh and the "Magic" we mentioned before is in the iWork templates...sorry to not have closed that loop..Oh, and Apple's Downloads page lists iWork '09 as the number 5 Top downloads.  We didn't download iWork '09, did you?

Here's the word directly from the horses mouth:

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

Our folks in Asia are at it again with some pretty startling news.  The 17-inch MacBook Pro is going Unibody, like the 13-inch and 15-inch models.  That, in itself isn't really that big of a deal; it was widely expected.  The big news is that Apple is making a super slim battery pack for the 17-inch MacBook Pros that will last much longer than current models.  However, you won't be able to remove the battery pack.  It will be inside the machine, just like iPods and iPhones.  How?  I've outlined a hypothesis on Apple pioneering Silver-Zinc battery usage here.

An interesting question has been floated over at Mac Soda.  Maybe Steve Jobs bailing on Macworld (and also on Apple) is somehow related to his appointment as Obama's Chief Technology Officer.  Just for fun, let's consider the connections. 

Obama is an Apple fan, we know he and his team use Macs.  And yes he does jog with an iPod (who doesn't?).  Apple, as did most of Silicon valley, largely supported Obama's presidency.  And there was the Obama iPhone App.  Obama has also been endorsed by Apple board member Al Gore, who also happens to be a good friend of Steve Jobs.  Fake Steve was even a huge Barry supporter.

Yep, it isn't just iWork.  iMovie is moving into the Cloud as well.   As Stevo said:

The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services.  And learn we will.  The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.

Check the details at Computerworld...

HP this week updated its MediaSmart home server, which has many services Mac users would love to take advantage of.  Centralized iTunes music database for the home, picture sharing, even file sharing over the Internet.

Apple should (have done) do something like this too, right?

We heard in August that Apple had some plans to expand the Time Capsule platform to include a lot of this functionality and more.  We aren't sure if this device will be shown at Macworld but here's what we've heard:

Don't let the news of Steve Jobs passing on Macworld let you down this holiday season.  Apple is doing really well.  A few news items combine to spell out a very successful holiday quarter.  First of all, portables are outnumbering desktops globally for the first time in history (iSuppli).  This is nothing new for Apple who has been seeing this for over a year in their Mac line.   Apple's strength is in laptops.

The interesting thing in the overall PC industry is that low margin netbooks have taken most of the desktop marketshare which has resulted in the aforementioned marketshare gain in laptops.  Apple, as you are probably acutely aware doesn't make netbooks and starts their laptop pricing at $1000.  Add to this the news that Apple sells 7 of the top 25 laptops on the Amazon best seller list.  Amazon, as the top global retailer in electronics, is a bellwether for the industry.   The top laptops (according to Apple 2.0):

• 7 Acer netbooks
• 7 Apple MacBooks (average $1500)
• 4 Asus netbooks
• 2 Samsung netbooks
• 2 MSI netbooks
• 1 OLPC (One laptop per child) XO laptop
• 1 Lenovo Ideapad laptop
• 1 Toshiba Satellite laptop (at $599)

Yep, except for a $600 Toshiba, every PC is a netbook and averages UNDER $400/ea with razor thin margins.  Conversely, the average MacBook is three times that price and a healthy margin for Apple.

Laptops are now the biggest part of the PC world (according to iSuppli), but desktops are still a force to be reckoned with.  Don't worry.  Apple is also cleaning up in this department, selling 4 of the top 5 desktops on Amazon. 

This is just kinda weird...How can you have such low budget actors with big budget special effects?