Make book on October MacBook refresh

October: the time of the year that the leaves start changing colors, the baseball season comes to a close, and Apple releases updated MacBooks. As an aside in his observations on Tuesday’s iPod event, our good friend John Gruber over at Daring Fireball snuck in a remark about an impending Apple laptop update:

Those of you holding out for a new lineup of MacBooks will have to wait until October 14, according to sources who, as they say, are familiar with Apple’s hardware plans.

What’s this? Rumors from the Gruber? Well, John’s not the kind of guy to post spurious facts willy-nilly: notice that he slipped it into a post on another subject instead of putting it under a screaming big Helvetica headline. Since then, a bunch of other sites have gone all atwitter for ferreting out this cleverly hidden detail.

For what it’s worth, our sources confirm that Gruber’s right on the money, and even if they didn’t, such a prediction is hardly out of left field. Apple revved MacBooks in late October/early November in both 2006 and 2007, and the last speed bumps the MacBook line saw was back in February, suggesting they’re due for an update—especially with Intel having recently pimped new mobile chips.

Look, we’re not going to tell you to take all your hard-earned money to Vegas and plop it down on October 14th. But, well, we’re not going to tell you not to either.