Executive Order Number 1: You never, ever wait until Friday to talk about something as monumental and earth-shattering as shiny, new hardware spurted forth from the bowls of Cupertino.
Never, ever.
As such, Macgasm Friday becomes Macgasm Tuesday, pushed out on the heels of Apple’s announcement of new design. “Of what?” you ask. Read on, dear reader.
Early this morning, Apple shuttered their store. The true fanboy — and perhaps the more knowledgeable poseur — knows what this action means: Apple is preparing to further enrich, enlighten, and improve our lives with the commissioning of a new metal-cased, Leopard-based prophet.
Behold your new Elisha, friends — the brand new MacBook Pro.
The buzz for the past few days has been centered on the idea of a new MB Pro — spurred on by the new notebook SKUs that hit the Apple Store and Best Buy (blech) with price points of $1,999 and up (too high for a MacBook, just right for a MacBook Pro).
Finally, a face to the buzz, and the end product was certainly deserving of the buzz — on the inside. No changes to the form factor and design, but we are treated to more power. The top of the line Pros now sport 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duos.
Of note: no Blu-ray, no new-style keyboard. Maybe the hyped-up buzz was a bit much.
Also of note: Apple is claiming the same 5-hours of “wireless productivity” for the two 15″ models as they did for the MacBook Air. Interesting.
Further: LED backlighting is also now available.
I wonder, though: did Apple cheap out with the iSight camera here like they did on the MB Air? We’re usually treated to 1.3 MP, but the Air came equipped with a dismal 0.3 MP camera. Seeing as a 1.3 MP camera wouldn’t have added any bulk to the Air, should we assume Apple is just lowering the standard across the board?
Regardless, this upgrade in the MacBook line is welcome with open arms.
What were you hoping for with the new MBP? Does multi-touch do it for you, or were you hoping for something more?
(link)
Update! (9:05AM ET) MacBooks (no suffix) are also seeing improvements in their processors with the better-of-the-two white models and the black model getting the bump up to 2.4 GHz. It looks like that’s it though. No LED backlighting, and no multi-touch. GPU changes across the board…
Update! (9:40AM ET) MacBook Pros are featuring processor speeds up to 2.6 GHz. Also, we’re seeing a 3MB or 6MB L2 cache on the CPUs, and RAM on the graphics cards is getting beefed up…
