Among the umpteen things that makes Apple different from other technology companies is this: it makes news by discontinuing products as well as introducing them. Today’s big announcements involve the arrival of OS X 10.7 Lion and updated MacBook Airs. But it’s also decided to stop producing the $999 white MacBook, a machine that had an uncommonly long life as the cheapest general-purpose Mac portable.

As recently as a week ago, the reliably unreliable Apple rumor mill said that an upgraded white MacBook was on its way. Then it decided that no update was imminent. And the truth turns out to be there won’t be an update because the machine is leaving the market.

The final white MacBook was a direct descendant of the one that Apple released in May 2006 (along with a black model which I mourned when it was discontinued in 2009), and it shared largely similar aesthetics with iBook models going back to, I believe, 2001.

May 2006 was a decidedly different era in Apple history than the present day: for one thing, there were no iPhones and no iPads. For another, an awful lot of the company’s products still came in plastic cases–between the iPod, the iMac, and the MacBook, white plastic was probably the case material most identified with Apple products.

Specwise, the current white MacBook is a modern computer: it offers better specs than older versions, a unibody case, and other improvements. But it still feels a bit like the Mac that time forgot. I can’t imagine that Steve Jobs, a man famously allergic to nostalgia, is a huge fan.

The machine’s disappearance doesn’t do anything to the starting price for Mac portables: it remains $999. But that buys you the new 11″ MacBook Air, a computer that’s strikingly unlike the MacBook. It’s vastly sleeker. It has a smaller screen, but with higher resolution. It weighs less than half as much. It’s battery life is shorter.  It has a quarter the storage, but it’s solid-state. It has fewer ports and no optical drive. It has a slicker case made of aluminum. It has a more current processor, but at a slower clock speed. It’s just a beast born of an entirely different set of tradeoffs.

(The 13″ MacBook Pro is a closer cousin of the white MacBook, albeit one that’s a lot slicker; it starts at $1199, which is presumably too steep for some of the folks who would have bought a white MacBook in the past.)

Why did Apple ax the white MacBook? Presumably, it wasn’t because sales were terrible or because it was unable to turn a profit on the thing. But the new MacBook Airs represent the company’s thinking as of mid-2011 about what a laptop in this price range should be like. And a majority of consumers seem to agree: the 11″ Air was already outselling its older white counterpart. Apple being Apple, it didn’t wait until the white MacBook was truly obsolete before it pulled the plug.

Me, I never owned one. But it reminds me of the black MacBooks which I did have, and knowing it was still around made me feel good. Even though I’d opt for the Air myself if I was buying a Mac on budget. I’m curious to see whether the 11″ MacBook Air becomes anywhere near as pervasive as the old standby which it’s kinda-sorta replacing.

When Steve Jobs brandished the MacBook Air onstage at MacWorld Expo 2008, it looked amazing (at least I was amazed as I snapped the photo above). After almost three years, though, it’s just another nicely-designed Mac–and a pricey one. (Toshiba’s Portege R700 may not feel as luxe, but its starting price is $600 less and it manages to pack a DVD burner into a case that matches the Air’s three-pound weight.)

But if the rumors are right (NOT A GIVEN! NOT A GIVEN!) Apple is readying an Air that replaces the current model’s 13.3″ display with an 11.6″ one, and shaves about ten percent of the weight off. Normally, I’d be skeptical about rumors of the company making a product cooler through significant downsizing of the display–but given the new iPod Nano, the idea of a sort of MacBook Air Nano is plausible.

The new entry-level MacBook is mostly much what you might guess it would be: A white-plastic model that brings a bunch of features from Apple’s higher-end models, including an LED backlit screen, a multi-touch touchpad with a built-in button, and a Mini DisplayPort connector. It loses the FireWire connector–oh no, not again!–but, strangely, doesn’t seem to gain an SD slot. It’s also got Apple’s sealed “unibody” design (in a curvier-looking form than the old MacBook case) with a built-in battery which Apple says is good for up to seven hours. And it’s 4.7 pounds, down from 5 pounds for its predecessor.

The MacBook didn’t get a price cut: It still starts at $999, which gets you a 2.26GB Core 2 Duo CPU, Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics, 2GB of RAM, and a 250GB hard drive. The mythical $899 Mac portable remains mythical for now.

The iMac line also got an upgrade, with new 21.5″ and 27″ models (starting at $1199 and $1699), both of which have 16-by-9 widescreen displays with LED lighting, SD slots, and the ability to connect external video sources such as a game console or Blu-Ray player via an adapter. (Some models of HP’s latest TouchSmart have a similar feature.) Processors now go up to a quad-core Intel Core i7.

The new iMacs come with a new wireless mouse called the Magic Mouse (sorry, Little Roquefort) with a multi-touch surface that lets you perform iPhone-like gestures such as swiping and pinching. It’s also available separately for $69.

Apple also beefed up the specs on the Mac Mini, and introduced an intriguing server version with Snow Leopard Server preinstalled, two hard drives, and no optical drive. It’s not a home server like HP’s MediaSmart, but maybe Apple is tippy-toeing in that direction.

It’s also only a matter of time until Apple ships a non-Air MacBook with no DVD drive–in part to save money, in part to make the system thinner, and hey, maybe even to encourage consumption of movies and music from the iTunes store. It wouldn’t stun me if the next-generation plastic MacBook were that machine–or if Apple knocked $100 or so off the pricetag to make it into an upscale alternative to a netbook. (No matter how cool an Apple tablet might be, some folks are going to want a traditional portable system at a relatively low price.)

One thing I hope Apple doesn’t do is to give the white MacBook’s replacement an aluminum case. As I wrote recent, I’m not so sure that plastic-clad notebooks don’t preserve their good looks better than their aluminum cousins, at least if you drop computers as often as I do. (Hey, I used to own a Saturn car, in part because of the plastic body.)

And yes, I know I illustrated this post with a photo of the black MacBook, which is already gone. Apple, which invented the idea of selling computers in different colors, doesn’t offer any model in more than one hue at the moment. But if black came back, I’ll bet Apple would once again find people who’d pay a premium for it.

MacBooks equipped with 7200rpm 500GB hard drives have experienced clicking sounds that are frequently followed by stalling, and customers have been complaining about the issue for months. Apple is working on a software update in response to the complaints, but has not said when the patch will be delivered.

There could very well be a low-level problem that Apple could remedy with a patch. Its systems are very well designed, and usually have high quality drivers and firmware. It’s just hard for me to fathom that the problem is just a software issue.

Call me a cynic, but when hard drives click, it oftentimes means that the drive has bad sectors and is failing. Apple could very well be dealing with a bad batch of hard drives, and all a software update would do is to glaze over the underlying problem to make the delays less noticeable.

If Apple reduces the number of customer returns by even 10 percent, it will save itself a lot of money. I hope that it is not simply putting off dealing with the full scope of the problem. I would like to hear from customers after they install the patch.

It’s a truly surprising development. Apple has historically been aggressive about erring on the side of removing technologies from its computers early, and while it often catches flack at the time, other PC manufacturers tend to fall into line eventually. When it killed FireWire on the 13-inch MacBook last year it made lots of folks very angry, but Steve Jobs himself apparently thought it was not a big deal. And so did I. In fact, I thought that other Macs would begin to lose their FireWire. I was wrong.

I can’t think of another instance in which Apple has moved to retire a technology and then changed its mind. (If there have been any, I know you’ll tell me.) It’s a little as if the second-generation iMac had brought back the floppy drive.

I’m still guessing that the company’s instinct is that FireWire is at the beginning of the end of its useful life, and that we’ll see lower-end Macs without it in the not-too-distant future. But for now, score one for FireWire fans–and for Apple, too, since it showed it was listening.

Me, I’m more excited about the fact that the company is finally shipping laptops with built-in slots for SD cards…

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Nokia’s N97 goes on sale.

Are the Webby Awards obsolete?

Is the new MacBook expensive?

That, at least, is my conclusion after conducting an experiment that I called Technologizer’s WWDC Prediction Challenge. I invited Technologizer community members to take a survey involving WWDC predictions, then tallied the results and considered any prediction to be official if the majority of survey respondents made it. You didn’t get every single data point right–and failed to anticipate the major changes Apple made to its laptop lineup–but your iPhone predictions were very close to perfect (unlike those of many bloggers and analysts). Overall, I’m impressed–and I think I’ll repeat the experiment before future Apple product launches.

After the jump, a full accounting of how your guesses squared with WWDC reality.

What you predicted: Apple would announce at least one iPhone today.

What happened: It did announce one or more iPhones today. One, to be precise.

Bottom line: You were right!

What you predicted: The new iPhone would have a higher-resolution autofocus camera that did video, more storage, a faster CPU, longer battery life, more RAM, a compass, and a new case. It wouldn’t have an OLED screen, multitasking, a thinner case, built-in iMovie, a high-resolution screen, flash, a light-up Apple logo, a smaller or larger screen, or a physical keyboard.

What happened: The iPhone 3G S has a higher-resolution autofocus camera that does video, more storage, longer battery life, and a compass. Apple says it’s much faster without explaining how it accomplished the feat, but it’s likely that it has a faster CPU and more RAM. It doesn’t have an OLED screen, multitasking, a thinner case, a high-resolution screen, flash, a light-up Apple logo, a smaller or larger screen, or a physical keyboard. I haven’t seen a 3G S in person yet, but the case seems unchanged. Oh, and it does have some built-in video editing features, but I didn’t hear Apple describe them as “iMovie.”

Bottom line: You got most of the specs dead-on, and avoided any wacky prognostications that turned out to be baseless.

What you predicted: Apple wouldn’t release a tablet.

What happened: Apple didn’t release a tablet.

Bottom line: Ding ding ding!

.What you predicted: Apple wouldn’t announce any new Macs.

What happened: Apple announced and shipped significantly new 13- and 15-inch laptops, and minor revisions to the 17-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. It didn’t any new desktops.

The bottom line: Nobody’s perfect. There wasn’t much scuttlebutt about new Macs before the keynote, although Daring Fireball’s John Gruber correctly predicted that the 13-inch unibody MacBook would become a MacBook Pro.

There’s been plenty of speculation about the possibility of at least minor upgrades to Apple’s Mac line being announced at WWDC. As a group, you guys aren’t buying it–no Mac model received a majority of votes.

What you predicted: Apple would announce a new iPod Touch, and wouldn’t announce any other iPods or other random hardware.

What happened: It didn’t, although the iPhone OS 3.0 software update will make all existing iPods Touch feel like new devices.

The bottom line: Remember this: Apple announces new iPods in September. The Touch is an iPod.

What you predicted: Apple would announce Snow Leopard, but wouldn’t unveil any other software and services.

What happened: Apple announced Snow Leopard.

Bottom line: It would have been bizarre if you’d predicted that Snow Leopard wasn’t going to get its day.

Not bad, folks. And aren’t you glad you didn’t tell me that we’d see an iPhone Nano onstage today?

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Verizon’s 3G BlackBerry flip phone.

Remember Apple’s cybercafes? Loved ‘em!

Microsoft had a good E3.

Eee PC’s 11-hour battery?

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