Brand: MacNews

Key3Media Group has officially announced that Phil Schiller, Apple VP of Worldwide Marketing, will deliver the Seybold San Francisco keynote on September 25. Schiller will be joined briefly by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who will address the crowd via satellite.

Sony has announced its new external 24x10x40x CD-RW drive, which is available with either USB 2.0 or FireWire interfaces. Both drives will ship in November for US$279 and $299, respectively.

HP has announced the world’s first DVD+RW drive, which will ship next month for US$599. The drive represents the third competing rewritable DVD technology, joining DVD-RW and DVD-RAM. Like the other technologies, including DVD-R, DVD+RW can store 4.7GB on a disc.

As expected, Handspring has dropped the price of its Visor Edge from US$399 to $299. The Visor Platinum has also been reduced to $199, while the Visor Deluxe and Visor sell for $169 and $129, respectively.

MacMinute’s Executive Briefing for August 18 — a recap of all the news we have posted over the past week — is now available. If you think you may have missed something, here is your chance to catch up…