With its chief executive not turning up, as rumoured, for the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Apple stuck to a relatively conservative range of incremental upgrades and was rewarded by the market.

Apple’s new iPhone 3GS (stands for speed) is predictably receiving the most attention at its World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, but a slew of new products and upgrades are sharing the limelight – along with the absence of talismanic CEO Steve Jobs.

Mac-heads rejoice: the rumours are all true. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled his company’s much-anticipated new MacBook line today, consisting of 13-inch and 15-inch models up to $NZ800 cheaper than their predecessors. Features include:

• No more cheesy plastic trim. A new “unibody” design that sees each of the notebooks cast from a single piece of aluminium. As well looking sleek, Jobs says the unibody makes the MacBooks thinner, tougher, and greener to manufacture.

Unless they possess the power to levitate, it seems unlike Apple's new MacBook's can live up to the rumours and hype. Still at least one thing is now certain: we know full details will be announced on October 15 (October 14 US time), the date featured on invites sent to US journalists over the weekend.

The October 15 event may -- or may not -- also resolve fever-pitch speculation about a new Apple product codenamed "The Brick", of which there are no firm details whatsoever, apart from the fact it's billed in some quarters as a Windows killer.

The Apple community continues to froth over new MacBooks, which are believed to be shipping October 14.

The latest edition to the increasingly frenzied rumour mill: the new models will feature graphics processors from NVIDIA. The Silicon Valley-based NVIDIA has reportedly being previewing the new MacBooks to its employees, and telling them October 14 has been set as the ship date.