After a nice little intro consisting of some Mac vs. PC ads and deep thoughts along the lines of Apple makes superior products and Vista was a big let down, Apple revealed its new manufacturing process and let loose the newest additions to its MacBook lines. Apple first discussed the process of building the current MacBook Pros, highlighting how difficult it is to design something that is thin and duarable when it is made out of so many parts. Yep, you know exactly where we’re going here. The MacBook Air was the beginning of Apple’s realization that rather than adding components to make the laptop case, it should start with a single piece of aluminum and remove pieces. The result is a lighter, sturdier smoother build. Apple starts with a 2.5-pound piece of aluminum (Brick) and ends up with a piece that weighs 0.25-pounds.
On to the good stuff! Apple’s new laptops will make use of the NVIDIA GeForce 9400 M GPU as we suspected. The new NVIDIA units are up to six times faster than Apple’s current GPU. The MacBook Pro will also have a second NVIDIA 9600M GT GPU that can be fired up when you need that extra graphics umph and don’t mind shedding an hour from the 5-hour battery life. Apple also unveiled its new glass trackpad with 30% more surface area and software-only buttons. They also support a variety of new gestures with up to four fingers! Remembering all those gestures should be fun. The new Pro will also be the first Pro model to have an optional SSD drive accessible under the battery. And so we have the new MacBook Pro: Unibody construction, bigger glass trackpad with software-only buttons, a backlit keyboard, a magnetic latch and a sudden motion sensor are among the highlights.
The new model will be offered in two configurations: $1999 gets you the 15.4 inch display, 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of DDR3 RAM and both graphics processor. Fork over $2499 and you’ll find yourself will a faster CPU and double the cache, 4GB RAM, twice the graphics memory and a 320GB hard drive. Sold.
