At Apple’s Spotlight Turns to Notebooks Event on Tuesday, Steve Jobs made an important new announcement: his blood pressure is 110/70. (What did you think he would talk about?) No really, aside from remarking on his healthy BP status, he also unveiled some fabulous new Macs to Apple’s line of notebooks.
As Ed mentioned, the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air got revamped with a bunch of new features. The MacBooks have been updated with much of the same technology, as I’ll outline below. The new enclosures are pretty sweet looking—think the new iMac (glossy glass display, aluminum with black color scheme), but in a laptop.
Check out what’s new:
Model Line-Up
- Two new metal enclosure MacBooks: $1299.99 and $1599.99
- Existing White MacBook drops to $999.99
New Features
- Metal enclosure: the same aluminum “unibody” enclosure as the new MacBook Pro; the unibody design is much stronger and less wasteful than previous multi-part aluminum pieces
- Faster graphics: uses an NVIDIA 9400M chipset
- New display: LED backlit display with corner-to-corner glass
- Multi-Touch Glass trackpad: has the same four-finger gestures as MacBook Pro (Two finger gesture = pinch and rotate for zooming and panning; Three finger gestures = swiping between photos; Four fingers = expose and app switching)
- Mini DisplayPort connector: smaller, different connection than the current mini-DVI connector (it will now power Apple’s 30-inch display!)
- Better environmental ratings: Aluminum enclosure more conducive to recycling, has an EPEAT Gold rating, and a 42% smaller packaging size
- Size specs: .95 inches 4.5 lbs
- Battery: 5 hours with an external detector
New Model Specs
- $1299.99: 13.3-inch LED backlit display, 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3MB L2 Cache, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 memory, 9400M GeForce, 160GB hard drive and SuperDrive.
- $1599.99: 13.3-inch LED backlit display, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3MB L2 Cache, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 memory, 9400M GeForce, 250GB hard drive and SuperDrive.
Some things to note about the $999.99 MacBook:
While it looks exactly like the White MacBooks that Apple previously introduced, there are some slight changes under the hood. The video card is slightly different than the previous White MacBooks, so be extra careful when considering new software (specifically games that require certain cards). We list all system requirements in our game descriptions, by the way. In addition, the new MacBook includes a SuperDrive rather than a Combo drive, so you’ll be able to burn DVDs as well (great for backing up—DVDs hold up to 6x as much data as CDs)!
Most importantly, though, they still include FireWire 400, which the other MacBook models don’t have. If you have a device that requires FireWire (more on that below), this may be the one for you—especially if you don’t want to go up to the MacBook Pros price point. However, if you do need that extra umph, the MacBook Pros include FireWire 800 (easily adapted to a FireWire 400 port with a conversion cable). Of course, we also have the previous generation MacBooks in limited supply, which include FireWire 400 in all three models. 🙂
See all MacBooks listed here:
http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Apple|MacBook
We’re offering free shipping on all new MacBooks!