Steve Jobs is full of surprises these days. At Apple's much-hyped press conference yesterday, the Apple chief zigged where analysts thought he would zag and introduced a revamped, rethought version of the MacBook instead of a stripped-down cheaper model.

The biggest move is thought to be the dissing of Intel chips for the graphics brains of chip maker Nvidia -- a telling move in that it shows Apple wants to raise the bar on performance and, possibly, manage capabilities beyond the scope of simply better graphics (which are what Macs are known for and, in my opinion, only marginally good for).

In line with analyst guesses before the event was the introduction of an aluminum 'unibody' for the notebooks, which means a sleeker casing and guts to the machines carved using water jets directly from a solid block of aluminum metal.

In what I think is a stunning omission, Apple has also decided to forego support for Blu-ray discs, presumably because the price of the players is still sky-high. But this lack of support takes out another pillar holding up the infant technology, so keep your eyes on that for further developments.

For complete coverage of the Apple event, visit our friends at CNet -- they've got your back on the whole deal, from the gaming implications of the metal notebooks to side-by-side comparisons with older Mac.