With the Macworld Keynote mere hours away – and our boys Vincent and James on their way to LiveBlog the whole thing for SlashGear - the rumor mill has not only spun up to a high milling-speed but practically consumed its own grinding wheel (yes, I’ll leave that metaphor alone now).  Central to the bloghype has been a purported leak of Steve Jobs’ keynote itself (reprinted in full below) in which the Apple chief announces the iPhone SDK, new 13-inch MacBooks measuring just 0.8-inches thick, a 16GB iPhone and YouTube downloads for Apple TV.  General consensus is that it’s too vague – and bland – to be real, and is either the warbling fantasy of an Apple-fan with too much time, or a distraction purposefully put out by devious Apple.

However, it’s not only leaky transcripts: the rumor of a so-called MacBook Air, hinted at by sources supposedly close to Apple and believed – thanks to a photo of one of Apple’s keynote boards – to involve some form of built-in high-speed networking, has led various Mac sleuths to search Whois, site user logs (in which a mysterious “MacBookAir” entry showed up as visiting prior to the board was spotted) [via Engadget 1/2] and even press releases for accessories to try to confirm that Steve will announce a super-slim notebook with external optical-drive. 

What will Apple announce tomorrow?  Frankly, my money is – like most people’s, it seems – on a freshly slimmed-down MacBook, despite my desire that they’d unveil a new Newton tablet based on the iPod Touch and iPhone multi-touch technology.  But the only way to know for sure is to wait – oh, and check out SlashGear’s live coverage of the event for every detail, as it happens!

Purported transcript of Keynote [Void Inside via Wired]:

MacWorld January 2008 Keynote Rough Outline; draft 5

Greetings! Welcome to Moscone Center

Quick Overview: iPod/iTunes


- Today: 30 indie labels releasing their entire catalogs in iTunes Plus


- iTunes doing extremely well (sales figures/market share)


- Another new game today: Chess


- 3 iPod games released last month accidentally (supposed to be for today)


- Our new models are doing better than ever


- Sales figures, market share


- iPod has been extremely profitable for us this holiday season


- Many more to follow in the next few months

iPhone


- SDK is unveiled!


- iPhone is coming to Japan in March with NTT DoCoMo


- Four times the memory as original iPhone for the same price


- Starting today: 8GB $399, 16GB $499


- Much more than the 1% market share we asked for in January


- Sales beyond our wildest dreams


- Sales figures, market share


- Best iPod ever

iPhone/iPod Touch SDK


- Automatic updating wirelessly or docked


- Users buy/download in iTunes Wi-Fi Store / iTunes Store (Mac/PC)


- Set your own price: Apps $0-$6.99, Widgets $0-$2.99


- Specify iPhone or both iPhone/Touch (certain features iPhone only)


- Developers submit programs as source code, not executable


- Using Cocoa with Objective-C


- Apps and Widgets


- If using microphone or GSM, iPhone only; otherwise, available for both iPhone and iPod Touch


- Submits source code to Apple for validation (make sure that people aren’t abusing the system, prevent malware and viruses)


- Demonstration of exporting from XCode 3 to iTunes Store


- Apps can be free or up to $6.99; Widgets free or up to $2.99


- Developers recieve 70% of revenue for their products


- Licensed under Apple Mobile Software License


- Can download wirelessly from iTunes Wi-Fi Store or docked to computer from iTunes Store


- Demonstration of wirelessly downloading (and running) the app submitted earlier


- Apps and widgets can be rearranged on front screen; front screen scrolls to show all apps/widgets


- Resubmit updated versions of apps; when added to store, iPhone/Touch will ask you to update it next time you use it (or next time you dock the iPhone/Touch)


- Developers can get their hands on a beta version of the SDK tomorrow on ADC and start developing; final version due early February


- iTunes 7.6 and iPhone/iPod Touch Software update 1.3 allowing for Apps mid-February

Example apps/widgets


Apps:


- One of our partners made something cool: Last.fm (scrobble tracks played on iPhone/touch wirelessly without syncing w/ computer)


- RSS Feed Reader (coming with 1.3 update) (read feeds online or off)


- iChat (coming with 1.3 update) (AIM, Jabber/Google Talk)


– Quick demonstration




Widgets:


- Another partner: Twitter (update your Twitter on the fly, see your friends tweets)


- Sports Ticker (coming with 1.3 update) (choose your sports and teams, get updates on their progress)


- Yellow/White Book (coming with 1.3 update) (search for contacts, add them to your address book directly from the app, will sync back with address book on your Mac/PC)


- Dictionary (coming with 1.3 update) (quickly look up words, translate, use wikipedia)


– Quick demonstration


- Try these out on the show floor today

Mac


- Selling extremely well; estimated to overtake Tiger in terms of marketshare by June if you only count the new Macs that come with it preinstalled; even quicker if you include boxed copies


- Sales figures/market share


- Hardware sales figures/market share


- Sales are getting better and better every day


- Leopard released October; doing spectacularly


- 10.5.2 out today – many bug fixes, also addressing a lot of issues and complaints users had such as list view with stacks and certain HIG non-compliance issues

New MacBooks!

- What would MacWorld be without a new Mac? (sorry about last year)


- Completely redesigned MacBook


- Completely aluminum body like MacBook Pro


- 13″ screen at 1440×900


- Two colors: Black and Silver


- Looks gorgeous at 0.8″ thin


- A major feat of engineering – patents abound


- DVD drive pops open on side when eject button is pressed


- New on all notebooks and iMac: iSight HD (720p)


- New backlit keyboard based on recent Apple Keyboard revisions (keys slightly lighter than that of laptop casing, colorwise)


- New matching MagSafe cable (Aluminum ends, cord color matches that of keyboard)


- New matching Apple Remote (slightly smaller with larger overall buttons)


- Intel GMA X3100 graphics


- 3 models


- Completely phasing out the combo drive on all product lines today


- BTO models can upgrade all the way to 2.6GHz/4GB Memory/320GB hard drive


- 4.5 hours of battery life


- Starting at $1199

Product Refreshes


- Refreshing Mac Pro and Mac mini today


- Mac Pro now with Penryn!


- Base model 2×2.8GHz dual-core/1GB/NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB/250GB(1×250GB)/1×16x double-layer SuperDrive


- Upgradeable to 2×3.2GHz quad-core/16GB/NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB/4TB(4×1TB)/2×16x double-layer SuperDrives


- Starting at $2,499


- Mac mini gets slight speed bumps and double-layer SuperDrive in all models


- Base model 2.0GHz IC2D/1GB/100GB


- BTO Upgradeable to 2.4GHz IC2D/4GB/320GB


- Starting at $599

One More Thing


- Been brewing for a while


- YouTube’s been in Apple TV and iPhone/iPod touch: now it’s in iTunes


- Download YouTube videos straight to iTunes or from iPhone/iPod Touch for later offline viewing (sync back to computer)


- Coming in iTunes 7.6 and iPhone/iPod Touch 1.3 updates