The new iMacs boast LED-backlit 21.5- and 27-inch widescreen displays in an edge-to-edge glass design and all aluminum enclosure. They’re available with Intel (INTC) Core 2 Duo processors starting at 3.06 GHz, and Core i5 and i7 quad-core processors for even better performance. The low-end model is priced at $1,199, the same as the past generation, but its high-end sibling is now $200 cheaper, at $1,999.

The new MacBook features an 13.3-inch LED backlit display, a multitouch trackpad, and a $999 price tag. Though still housed in white polycarbonate plastic, it features an updated unibody design borrowed from the MacBook Pro.

The successor to the Mighty Mouse, Magic Mouse, eliminates mechanical buttons, instead, employing the same multitouch surface found on the iPhone, iPod touch, and Mac notebook trackpads, allowing users to navigate their desktops with simple gesture commands.

Accompanying the Magic Mouse is a a new Apple Remote. It’s got a new design and is, predictably, housed in aluminum.

Finally, Apple (AAPL) also updated the Mac mini. While its design is largely identical to that of its predecessor, it offers far more storage. Starting at $599, the entry-level Mac mini features a faster 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory, a 160GB hard drive, five USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800, Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics and a SuperDrive.

There’s also a new $999 Mac mini that’s specially configured with a Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server. It’s outfitted with two 500GB hard drives for a total of 1TB of server storage.

Quite a refresh and one analysts are already crowing about. In a bulletin released after the announcement, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster said Apple’s new machines will undoubtedly improve the company’s prospects for the December quarter.

“We expect the new iMacs, and to a lesser degree the new Mac minis, to help the desktop category rebound in the Dec. quarter,” Munster wrote. “In other words, the headwind that existed in the Sept. quarter due to aging Mac desktops has now turned into a tailwind for Mac units in the Dec. quarter….Bottom Line: Street Mac numbers may also be conservative if positive trends continue coupled with new Macs in the quarter.”

When Daily Variety broke the news that Pixar had hired writers for the pitch that became the 2007 release, ‘Ratatouille,’ Steve Jobs tracked the reporter down at the Sundance Film Festival, demanding to know her sources and threatening to fire the film’s writers. He called her on the private line of a rented condo–a number she had not given out to anyone. She still doesn’t know how he found it.”

– Daily Variety, June 18, 2006

Beyond the technology on display at Tuesday’s Apple event, what was perhaps most interesting was the accuracy with which it had been predicted. Astonishing really, given Apple’s near-monomaniacal secrecy. With the exception of that bogus $800 MacBook story, nearly every single rumor voiced in the weeks preceding Tuesday’s event was proven true–Apple’s new “brick” manufacturing process, aluminum enclosures for consumer MacBooks, LED backlit display, multi-touch glass trackpads, the screaming fast new Nvidia GPUs, even the date of the MacBook event itself. So when CEO Steve Jobs took the stage and said, “we have some exciting new products to show you,” most everyone sitting in the audience already had a pretty damn good idea what they were about to be shown. And that’s got to bother Apple (AAPL), which has long argued that leaks dampen excitement around product launches and taken legal action against rumor sites that publish them. Certainly, Jobs, showman that he is, can’t be pleased that the rabbits he’d planned to pull out of his hat Tuesday were hopping willy-nilly about the stage before he even arrived.

But apparently there’s little Apple can do to stop it. Or it’s given up trying. Or something else. “There used to be saying at Apple,” Jobs recalled at our D5 conference: “Isn’t it funny? A ship that leaks from the top.”

Perhaps it’s time for that saying be brought back into popular usage.

“Field checks confirm that shipments of new MacBooks have begun, with a sharp production ramp planned for September and an introduction planned for early October,” Gardner wrote. “The most distinctive features of the new MacBook appear to be a very thin aluminum casing, an LED-backlit display and an aggressive entry-level price point.”

Gardner expects Apple (AAPL) to introduce its fall notebook line “within weeks.” October 14, perhaps?