Well, the SteveNote has started. Like last time, I feel a bit weird blogging live about someone else blogging live–but with there being no live webcast, there’s not much I can do about that, except not to live-blog, but then what would I do while waiting for screen refreshes? I mean, get real.

MacRumors has the best coverage–their notes are fairly good–not as good as Engadget’s, but you have to reload the whole Engadget page (the reload fails most of the time), whereas MacRumors has a smarter system which updates continuously, and works pretty well. Apple stock is moving very little (in fact, it’s falling), surprising considering that they just announced 4 million sales of iPhones and 5 million sales of Leopard. The 20% adoption of Leopard is great news, but 4 million iPhones? That’s a hell of a lot of iPhones, more than I believe a lot of people expected they’d be able to sell.

Steve is showing off the new iPhone features, but (a) they are pretty much the same as what had been leaked a few weeks back, and (b), the main thing I want to know is, when is it coming to Japan! I will be very disappointed if that’s not announced today. Ummm…. he just finished talking about the iPhone, and no announcements about its release. Yargh. Later? “One more thing”?

The iTunes movie rentals are being announced, and every major studio seems to be on board with the service–including Universal. How about that. The base service can be wholly computer-based. Rental rules: 30 days to start viewing, 24 hours to finish viewing after you start; viewable very quickly, you don’t have to wait forever for the download to get there; $3 for older films, $4 for newer films; new titles available 30 days after the DVD release (NetFlix doesn’t seem to have too much to be worried about). No word yet on the resolution of the movies. And something I’m wondering: like iTunes, will I be able to use the service from Japan, so long as I have a credit card with a U.S. billing address? Hmmm….

AppleTV does get in on the show, however. If you want DVD-quality movies, you can get it with the AppleTV unit, which can be used as a stand-alone box, no computer required. (Hmm–that suggests that computer-only rentals are “less-than-DVD quality”…). You pay more: $5 for an HD rental. No wonder all the studios are on board–Apple seems to have caved on the pricing.

Okay, what the heck is going on with Apple’s stock? I don’t see anything so far that is not good, and yet AAPL is dropping like a rock–almost $10, or more than 5%, most of that since the keynote started. Am I missing something? I know that Apple rises on rumor and drops on news, but (a) it hasn’t risen on rumor that much lately, and (b) last year, it rose a lot on news… so I am just trying to figure out what’s up with this.

Right. It’s time for MacBook Air. Again, this is almost exactly as the rumors have predicted–almost no surprises at all in this Expo son far. (Is that why the stock is dropping? Strange if true.) Seems to be targeted between the MacBook and MacBook pro lines.

They finally showed pictures of it. Damn, that’s a slim notebook. Where the hell does the battery go? As rumors said, they must have left out the optical drive. BlueTooth and WiFi-n, natch–you would need wireless on this thing.

Well, Damn. No iPhone-for-Japan announcement. How depressing.