9 to 5 Mac have their LivePanel up and ready to roll, Ars Technica will be posting here. There will of course be many other blogs re-playing the event either in real time or shortly after the fact.

Check back later for updates and comments on the outcome. Heres hoping for another “One More Thing” launch… Its been too long….

Due to other commitments this weekend I only had time to upgrade my MacBook on Saturday. This went fine, taking less than an hour from start to finish, so this afternoon the first of the to iMacs ( 20″ ) was upgraded and again no issues.

Finally tonight BigMac, my 24″ iMac was lined up for its turn. After running for about half an hour the install failed and I was offered the option to restore from Time Machine backup ! ARGH.

First check was to see if BigMac had actually started to upgrade so I opened Disk Utility which reported the drive correctly and stated that the OS was 10.5.8 so my first thought was that the install had not actually started and that the original OS may still be bootable. After setting the internal drive as the boot disk and rebooting I quickly realised this was NOT the case, the Mac just rebooted and powered off !

I then tried connecting BigMac using target disk mode to my MacBook to see if the drive still had my data on it. Target disk mode failed to work and the iMacs drive did not appear as a volume on the MacBook.

Next I booted back off the Snow Leopard install disk again and this time went into Terminal from the Options menu. A quick directory listing of /Volumes/Bigdisk ( BigMacs internal drive ) showed that all the data was in fact still intact so I decided to err on the side of caution and attach an external firewire drive and make a copy of the data before starting a clean install ( at this point the smart alecs in the audience will be saying, “should have made a bootable copy of system before starting the install”, which is entirely correct, however Bigdisk is 1Tb and I dont have another 1Tb drive to copy to so…. )

So at the moment I am still copying each directory from BigMacs home folder onto firewire disk so I can do a clean install. Before doing the clean install I may try the restore from Time Machine option just out of interest….

@Zerock sent me a tweet earlier this evening to say that he had experienced a similar install failure but he had not as yet attempted to recover the failed machine.

I would be keen to hear from other early adopters of Snow Leopard who have had similar ( or different ) problems with the upgrade this weekend. Drop me a line here or send me a tweet at @UKMac

According to other @MyAppleStuff it appears that Spanish Mac users were similarly disappointed. Many countries on the other hand seemed to have more luck, Twitter was alive yesterday with reports of early deliveries from Hong Kong, Australia, Europe and US.

What was your experience yesterday ? Did you risk pre-ordering and if so from which suppliers ? Was your order delivered yesterday ? Do you think that pre-orders SHOULD arrive on day of release ? Will you go to Apple Store to buy next time ( UKMac Will ! )

The second “Surprise” has PC posing as Mac and advising another prospective PC buyer to get a PC. When the lady leaves PC strips his disguise just as real Mac enters stage left.

Not the greatest ads of the campaign it has to be said and it is becoming clear that despite their outstanding success these ads are becoming a little stale. Time for a new Campaign ?

Personally when I read about Windows 7′s new “XP mode” I thought maybe Microsoft had grasped the problem and were putting a sensible solution in place to enable them to free themselves from the shackles of backward compatibility without losing too many customers along the way ( clearly nothing innovative here as this is what Apple did by rolling OS 9 into OS X when it was released in 2000 ), however when I read the full gen on this and realised that this “slick” integration actually requires you to install Virtual PC and then XP and then Antivirus and firewall software for XP etc I was forced to concede that yet again Microsoft have completely missed the point !

Sorry Redmond but I think you have some tough times ahead and some tough decisions to make, and to be honest I think I agree with Daniel that from past history it is unlikely you will make the right ones.

In reality the day is probably fast approaching when cables will become a relic of the early days of electronics, wireless power has been the goal of many teams of physicists and engineers around the world for years, and has been demonstrated in actual products on a limited scale on an increasingly regular basis over the last couple of years. It goes without saying I think that Apple will be watching developments in this area with keen interest, that is if they are not engaged in developments of their own.

Couple wireless power with Ultra Wide Band radio ( UWB ) for transmitting video signals and the next generation of Cinema displays will finally be able to lose the tethering cables and Apples marketing teams will be able to honestly show pictures how they would probably like to show them already, sans-cables !

Still, this event has long been expected to revolve around new notebook announcements and this is one Apple blog that is actually hoping for return to previous “And One More Thing” style launches, having been more than a little deflated after the last couple of Steve Notes.

Clearly a product to wow the Apple faithful is well overdue as is a refresh of the aging Macbook lineup ( Macbook Air excepted of course ).

Personally I would like to see Apple attacking the growing Netbook market with a really price competitive sub-notebook, but I think this is probably not going to happen. More likely I think is a consolidation of the Macbook range with uniform aluminium casing across the consumer and Pro models, and presumably a lift in performance and specs at the same time.

Less likely potentials include the oft discussed tablet laptop, though with the advances in touch screens that the iPhone has brought in this always remains a distant possibility, and my personal hope for MUCH improved sound output which on the Macbook is weedy to the point of being ridiculous.

Looking forward to next week…. Cheers