Whats new with MacBook?
Author: admin | Filed under: Announcements, Apple Tech, Macbooks
Good Question… there is a whole lot of great new stuff going on for the new MacBook.
Of course first glance shows the new body shape. The MacBook has been redesigned from the ground up as far as body and structure is concerned. The body is a bit more trim and light than the previous models. It is also a unibody like the macbook pro, which increases strength and durability. It also allows Apple to design it thinner. The screen also received the LED backlit technology which is not only a nicer screen, but on a laptop it also equals better battery life. In conjunction with its’ new battery… we are talking some serious battery life, up to 7Hrs! The new battery in the MacBook is similar to the Pro 13″. It is embedded in the casing which means no more hot-swapping batteries (downside) but also means that you can trim weight and increase battery size. This means that now we are holding the equivalent of about 2 (previous version) batteries with us at all times.
Then there is the nice new Glass Trackpad. This makes the MacBook the first laptop from Apple to receive the glass trackpad. What does this mean beyond the fact that it sounds cool? Well it is a nicer feel for starters. It will feel like your iPod Touch or iPhone. It is nice and big, and it also means tons of room for gestures (a first for the entry macbooks). There is still no button. You can click anywhere on the pad or double-click. And right-click can be done with the two-finger tap (my favorite) or clicking in the bottom-right corner (customizable to bottom-left for lefties). Then there are gestures for all the basics (zoom, swipe, scroll) plus some nice new ones, four finger hot-swipes that can be customized like the hot-corners of your screen (exposé, spaces, dashboard, desktop, etc.).
Now we can’t forget that the MacBook also received a nice overhaul under the hood. We already mentioned the battery, but in addition it got a speed boost. Processor speed is 2.26Ghz (not customizable). Memory is 2Gb standard, and upgradable to 4Gb for $100 (not a bad deal). Harddrive is 250Gb standard and upgradable to 320Gb or 500Gb for $50 or $150 respectively.
Best of all the MacBook is finally getting a graphics processor! A little known fact about the MacBook is that they have never come with a dedicated graphics processor like the Pro models. This is fine for most users, until it comes to games, photoshop, Aperture, and even extensive work with iMovie and iPhoto. Which is when limitations started to come out. But now, MacBooks come with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor in them, which will give us, up to 5x performance boost, according to Apple’s performance tests over the previous models of MacBooks, and if you are a few models back, expect even higher numbers.
It’s hard to complain after all the great things that we have just talked about. I feel like telling Apple a big thank you, but then again, it is their highest selling computer model (why wouldn’t they want to make it awesome?). I love the price the most… without any discounts of any kind… the raw MSRP given from Apple is $999 for this MacBook. This will give you 2.26Ghz processor, 2Gb Memory, 250Gb HDD, which is a pretty sick deal (good kind of sick). You can upgrade from that to 4Gb Memory and 500Gb HDD for only $1250, and this is a fully loaded white MacBook.
I do want to mention a couple of tiny upsets, or things consumers should be aware of. There is no firewire port anymore (not cool one bit), and like I said earlier, the batteries are built-in. No more hot-swapping batteries. Now with a 7hr battery, i am fine with it being built-in… but no FireWire port = no video capture ≠ cool. But I guess for that, Apple is hoping users that need that will jump up to the Pro lineup.
Either way. This is the time to get a macbook.
Tags: Apple, Design, feature, firewire, MacBook, New, thinner, upgrade