Rumors around the changes in store for Apple’s laptop line started way back in July. One of the more persistent has expectations set to ‘high’ for a MacBook with a glass, multi-touch, gesture-oriented trackpad.

We found the mockup pictured above posted by Photobucket user skylersaleh; what do you think?

UPDATE: Tons of People have signed up already. It will be this afternoon before I can add anyone else. I’ll have an update on the specific prized to be awarded later this week!

For those of you who’ve been following our Greatest Mac Moments posts. We’ve not discontinued them. They weren’t generating the kind of discussion I’d hoped, so we’re moving the format to monthly, where we’ll publish 5 at a time, which ought to spur some discussion.

Also, we’d like to announce another project. Following on the heels of our ridiculously successful “Just One More Thing” timeline, we’d like to create a timeline of Apple Products, complete with Dates, times and announcement videos if we can find them.

We would like Your Help! We’re going to open this one up to CoM readers to contribute. The top contributors will be eligible for prizes like an iPhone, iPods and other cool gear!

The Timeline is Here. It’s blank right now, but we hope to have it complete by the 25th Anniversay of the Mac in January.

If you’d like to contribute, send an email to: CoMTimeLine at gmail dot com, include a valid email address and we’ll get you set up.

Thanks!

I usually steer clear of a point by point repudiation of another writer’s work, but reader Handsomematt asked me to, and there is little I won’t do to satisfy the desires of our readers (are you reading this, Scarlet?)

It all started with my piece about how Chrome is an operating system for cloud computing, and why Apple isn’t scared at all. Handsomematt (hereafter: ‘Mat’), forwarded me an article indicating that apparently I was completely full of it. What’s more, what I thought was a piece of insightful analysis disappointedly turns out to be conventional wisdom.

Nevertheless Matt, here you go, Writing on the Wall, or Premature “Googasm“, follow us after the break, and you decide.

Author and Mac guru Adam Engst has just released the third edition of Take Control of Buying a Mac, in which he talks about what’s new and what hasn’t changed about buying a Mac since the Intel transition. The book reviews why hard drive size isn’t important, but RAM is, and why an iMac may be your best choice. Laptop or desktop? Which laptop? Engst delivers answers to these questions and more in the 98 page book.

The book features a chart of Apple’s model launches over the last 5 years to help predict when new Macs will appear and worksheets help you match your needs and budget to the right model Mac. Engst explains when readers can purchase to get the most bang for their buck, compares different venues for where to shop, gives advice and step-by-step instructions for transferring files from an old Mac to the shiny new one, and offers thoughts about how to get the most out of the Mac that’s being replaced. The book costs $10 and is available at Take Control Books.

I was intrigued when I read my colleague Johnny Evans’ post about 7digital and its 4 million DRM-free tracks available in 320k MP3 quality, so I went to the site to pick up a copy of the classic Harry Nilsson album, The Point, which I’ve been wanting to buy.

I found the site easy enough to navigate, with a pleasant balance between text and graphics that seemed a refreshing change from iTunes’s hevavily-graphics-oriented interface. I located The Point quickly, listened to a couple of preview tracks and thought, hey, why not? Signing up for an account was even relatively painless and straightforward, and when it came time to give my address, I put in that of a friend who lives in London, which is when the deal started heading south. See how after the jump.

PC user in “I’ve got a beard” shocker!

Leander already wrote about the new Microsoft ads, noting that they convincingly portray “the PC as part of global culture, unpretentious and down-to-earth”.

But, really, they say very little. Instead of finding these adverts a refreshing antidote to the brash and somewhat tiresome arrogance of Apple’s ads, they just come across as a feeble and overly defensive response, like a weedy geek whimpering “stop picking on me, dammit!” Microsoft should have blazed on to the scene, proving its worth and reasoning why it’s better than Apple, or at least hammered home its point with a little humor.

Instead, we get dry, by-the-numbers, designed-by-committee adverts that are borderline nauseating. Little more than a self-congratulatory pat on the back, they tell us what we already know: lots of people use PCs, and PCs can be used for diverse things. Thrilling. They don’t say lives can be made better by using PCs, nor do they provide any compelling reason whatsoever to check out Microsoft’s output over the competition. (Possible exception: beard lovers.) They’re also dull, unimaginative and unoriginal, riffing weakly off of Apple’s ideas, rather than Microsoft coming up with its own. While that might make them very relevant to Microsoft, that doesn’t make them good adverts.

Apple’s gains on Microsoft haven’t been down to advertising—in fact, one might argue that Apple’s advertisements actually put many people off the brand. Instead, they’ve been down to user experience, and rallying against complacency. Until Microsoft can offer similarly persuasive arguments, I can’t see its adverts convincing anyone to stick with ‘PC’, let alone switch to it.

The more I watch Microsoft’s new ad for Windows, the more I like it.

The ad, which debuted on Thursday night, successfully counters the idea promoted by Apple that PCs are bumbling buffoons personified by prematurely middle-aged businessmen.

Instead, the ad convincingly portrays the PC as part of global culture, unpretentious and down-to-earth.

The ad starts with a John Hodgman-alike Microsoft engineer, who proudly declares: “I’m a PC, and I am not alone.” It then swings through Europe, Africa, America and back again, showing people of all nations declaring simply one after the other: “I’m a PC.”

It ends with author Deepak Chopra, who says: “We are all a PC, inseparably one.”

Watch it carefully. The people and locations of the ad clearly reflect Bill Gates’ concerns about the world: disease, poverty, education and opportunity. Bill Gates makes a appearance (a welcome one. I admire him giving away his money), and there’s quite a few people from developing countries in this ad: something I’ve never seen in Apple’s marketing.

They’re real people, with accents and bad teeth (like me). I find it a refreshing antidote to the fake youthfulness of Apple’s iPod silhouettes and the insufferable, elitist hipster who personifies the Mac on TV.

I like Microsoft’s new ad because it portrays the PC through the very ordinary people that use these machines every day — and some extraordinary ones. It’s the opposite of Apple’s phony lifestyle advertising. It’s refreshingly egalitarian. It’s like “The Wire” versus “Law and Order.” Plus, there’s no sign of Jerry Seinfeld.

UPDATE: Two more new ads after the jump.

If you enjoy running a Windows game alongside your usual Mac applications, you aren’t alone. New numbers indicate U.S. sales of virtualization software is up 50 percent this year.

The sales increase would be even greater than the 41 percent jump in Mac hardware sales Apple recently reported.

Between $15 million and $20 million of Mac virtualization software has been sold so far in 2008, according to NPD Group analyst Michael Redmond.

Redmond, talking to Computerworld, credited Apple’s move to Intel processors for “encouraging more users to experiment with virtualization.”

Differing from Apple’s Boot Camp, which lets Mac users reboot into a Windows environment, virtualization software permits Intel Apple’s to run Windows applications within OSX. The most frequent uses of Mac virtualization is to play a Windows game that has yet to be released for the Apple platform or for developers to test software designed for Windows users.

Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion are the two leading virtualization software packages for the Mac. Parallels, introduced in 2006, has sold a million copies while Fusion (now Fusion 2) sold a quarter million copies since coming on the Mac VM scene in 2007.

(Photo: Jimmy Joe)

Guess which one is Steve? Clue: The only one thinner than Sir Mick.

Steve Jobs is hobnobbing with Sir Mick Jagger in Brussels, according to the EC press service.

Jobs met with Sir Mick at an online commerce roundtable to discuss “opportunities and barriers” to online retailing in Europe, the EC says. Other bigwigs included EC competition commissioner Neelie Kroes and the heads of LVMH, Alcatel, eBAy, Fiat and EMI, and others.

The business leaders met on Wednesday.

Jobs may be in Europe to attend Apple Expo in Paris, which just opened, although Apple doesn’t have a booth at the show.

The annual Apple Expo trade show is the biggest Apple-oriented show in Europe. Until 2003, Jobs has delivered a keynote speech there. But as Apple has expanded its chain of stores around the world, it has been pulling out of more and more conferences: Macworld in New York, NAB in Las Vegas and Apple Expo in France.

“Apple is participating in fewer trade shows every year, because often there are better ways for us to reach our customers,” an Apple spokesman told Macworld.

More details and pictures after the jump.

The US back to school promotion’s done, but its equivalent has now fired up in the UK. Brits can now grab Apple laptops or iMacs, an iPod nano or iPod touch, and then get a rebate of up to £95 (which doesn’t actually cover the cost of even the cheapest iPod on offer, but still).

The most interesting part about this is the offer’s closing date: the spooktastic October 31. It’s pretty rare for Apple to start shipping new Macs when this kind of promotion is still running (although it does sometimes happen), so does this mean we now won’t be seeing new Mac laptops and iMacs until November? Or are British students just getting ‘encouraged’ to clear Apple’s UK inventory, readying the company for its autumn/fall assult?

Update: other European Apple Stores are also running similar offers—this isn’t just specific to the UK.