The MacBook Air may have stolen the show yesterday, but the MacBook Pros got a huge boost in power, while flying under the radar a little bit. Apple has added the build to order option of Core i7 processors on their 15 inch and 17 inch MacBook Pros, while also offering Core i5 models a 2.8 GHz iCore 7 processor.
If you’re looking to upgrade to the new Core i7 chip, it’ll cost you at least another $400.00. The first model available with the Core i7 chip also ships with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB HD, as well as a NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics card. The 13 inch MacBook Pros still have the Core 2 Duo processors.
The split between Pro and Consumer based computers has never been more evident. The MacBook Air still has a Core 2 – Duo chipset, making it substantially slower than the 15 and 17 inch MacBook Pros; however, the solid state drive helps to boost the response time of the MacBook Air.
It’ll be interesting to see some benchmarks for the new MacBook Air versus these new MacBook Pros with the iCore processors. If you’ve picked up the new MacBook Air already, you could make the news by posting that information on the web.
Be sure to let us know if you do it.
Update: We’ve gotten a lot of response about this post and thought we should clear some things up. Apple updated the MacBook Pro and provides the 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 chip as a build to order option. We erroneously assumed it was an entire introduction of the iCore chip. We’ve flogged ourselves accordingly. Thanks for keeping us honest.
Article Via The Apple Blog
