We're used to obscure portents or even no advance notice at all about Apple products, but this one takes the cake for clarity. Apple has invited media and analysts to an event at the company's headquarters in Cupertino on 14-Oct-08. The invitation features a beam focused across an open laptop with an Apple logo, and a headline reading, "The spotlight turns to notebooks." Be sure to check our Web site on Tuesday to catch our coverage of the event and analysis of the new machines.

Certainly, those who pay attention to the patterns of Apple product releases (like Adam, because of his "Take Control of Buying a Mac" ebook - see the Release Date Chart on the book's Web page) have been expecting a major announcement related to laptops in the last few months of the year, and the rumor mills have been awash with speculation (some of it truly silly) about what features might appear with updated laptops. The moral of the story is, don't buy a laptop from Apple until October 14th, after which you can decide if the new machines are what you want, or if you want to look around for a deal on the previous generation.