Apple Announces October 14 Notebook Event

Apple this morning announced an invitation-only event at the company’s Town Hall in Cupertino (just as Daring Fireball predicted back in September). As you can see from the invitation below, the focus is clearly notebooks. It appears those alleged photos of the Apple (AAPL) next-generation MacBook Pro casing that have been floating around recently may be the real deal. Same goes for rumors of a new $800 MacBook.

The event may explain as well the “future product transition” that compelled Apple to forecast a nearly 5 percent drop in gross profit margin for the final quarter of the 2008 fiscal year. Apple offered few details of that transition, though CFO Peter Oppenheimer said during a July earnings call that it will involve “state-of-the-art new products that our competitors just aren’t going to be able to match.”

“One of the investments we make is to introduce new products that initially cost more because they deliver an entirely new level of value to the customer,” Apple COO Tim Cook said during the same call. “Then we ride the cost curves down with value engineering and volume manufacturing, leaving us far ahead of our competitors. We have some of these types of investments in front of us that I can’t discuss.”

Until Tuesday, Oct. 14, that is.