Apple launches new "Brick" MacBooks
Unibody enclosure, multi-touch glass trackpads, Nvidia graphics
14 October 2008 18:38 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott
At a "town hall" event in from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California, the company's CEO Steve Jobs has updated the company's MacBook line, as was expected.
Rumours of Apple "revolutionising" the manufacturing process for their laptops have been proved correct.
At the event, Apple designer Jonathan Ive got up on stage to describe the new process that takes a 2.5lbs piece of aluminium and ends up with a piece that weighs a quarter of a pound with the claim that the new cases will be light and strong.
The rumoured multi-touch glass trackpad has also turned out to be true - it offers a 39% larger tracking area, multi-touch for gestures, glass for "silky-smooth" travel, new four finger gestures and the entire trackpad is the button, although multi button is possible through software.
In addition, the new breed of Apple notebooks get twin Nvidia chips with the Nvidia GeForce 9400 M that offers the chipset and the GPU on one die launching in the new laptops.
The new MacBook Pro will get that "precision alumiunium unibody enclosure", an LED backlit display, "next gen" graphics, a mini display port connector and that new glass trackpad.
Perhaps still basking in the glow of Greenpeace's praise for the new iPod nano's green credentials, Jobs described the new MacBook Pro as "environmentally responsible".
Available in two models, the first will be priced at $1999, will have a 15.4-inch 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, Nvidia 9400 and 9600 chips.
The second model will be priced at $2499, boast a faster CPU with double cache, 4GB RAM, double graphics memory and a 320GB hard drive.
UK pricing is £1399 and £1749 respectively with the 17-inch model on sale for £1949.
The MacBook has also been given the refresh treatment with two new models launching - priced at $1299 and $1599. In the UK the prices are £949 and £1149 with the old white model now selling for £719.
With the new metal enclosure, the LED backlit display and the faster Nvidia graphics, as well as the multi-touch glass trackpad, it seems the next-gen MacBooks will launch "on top" of the current white models, with the base model priced at $999.
The $1299 version offers a 13.3-inch display, 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU and a 160GB hard drive.
The $1599 model gets the same spec apart from a 2.4GHz processor, 250GB hard drive and a backlit keyboard.
In addition, Apple refreshed the slim-line Air with the Nvidia 9400M chip, the mini display port and has added a 120GB hard drive, with a 128GB SSD as an option. This will cost $1799.
There will also be a $2499 model that offers a 1.86GHz CPU and 126GB SSD that will be available in the States in early November.
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