Apple unleashes new MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt

Apple unleashes new MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt

As expected, Apple today has announced new MacBook Pros.

All models ship with a Core i5 or i7, with quad-core processors showing up in the 15- and 17-inch variants. Each model comes with the Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor, with the AMD (!!) Radeon chipsets. The new machines also include a “FaceTime HD” camera, with much better low-light performance, and the ability to record and chat in 720p to other new MacBook Pro owners. An SDXC card slot is also present.

The external design looks unchanged, except for one logo on the side of the machine: Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt — Apple’s implementation of Intel’s Light Peak — boasts massive performance increases over USB and FireWire 800. Using the Mini-DisplayPort, Thunderbolt is backwards-compatible with numerous standards, including HDMI, DVI, VGA, USB and more.

We fully expect to see this tech show up in other Apple products soon, as well as on a slew of third-party accessories.

See the complete spec list here.

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About Stephen M. Hackett

Stephen Hackett, formerly a Lead Mac Genius at Apple, now spends his days running the IT department of a large non-profit in Memphis, TN. He writes about Apple, design and journalism at forkbombr.net. Like all twenty-somethings, you can find him on Twitter. Oh, and he has a dogcow tattoo.

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Marilyn Halpin

In an effort to not spoil this Christmas day I intentionally did not read anything on Light Peak or ThunderBolt. As someone who spends a ton of time transferring data for a living the possibilities of this little port excite me. I hope this technology will be on the next iteration of the iPad as well as the iPhone as doing a full restore from backup currently takes me about an hour. Thinking about all the time I will save not waiting for data to transfer makes me a bit giddy.

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Joshua Schnell

Looks like I'm going to be opening up the coffers in the upcoming months once Light Peak makes its way to Cinema Displays, and all that other fun stuff. Might have to get a mini loan. ;)

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Trackbacks

  1. Podcast: Thoughts on the new MacBook Pro and OS X Lion | Macgasm says:
    February 24, 2011 at 4:53 PM

    [...] Schnell Guest: Peter CohenOS X Lion seeded to developers, and the newly announced featuresNew MacBook ProsThunderboltBrief Discussion about the Mac App Store, Blu Ray, and FaceTime HD.[Download Episode] [...]