Macbook Pros Debut Quietly, Pack New Power
Photographers and graphic artists have always loved Apple Macs since Day One. It used to be a badge of artistry and exclusivity (not to mention geekness). Now that Apple is sporting the more mass-based and more powerful Intel processors they find out, hey, it’s not bad at all!
Last Tuesday, Apple quietly announced their fastest Macbook Pros ever, sporting Intel’s newest Core 2 Duo (Merom) processors and touting 39% increases in performance. Without much fanfare from His Steveness, we are suddenly gifted with more powerful 15� and 17’ Macbooks with 2.33 GHz of computing puissance.
Under the hood, the Macbook Pro has 4MB of shared L2 cache, 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and PCI Express-based ATI Mobility Radeon X 1600 with 256MB GDDR3 memory. It is also packed with a slot-loading SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive.
These are actually the first Macbook Pros to be fitted with the new Core 2 Duo speed demons. Several months ago, in Apple’s initial outing with Intel, it geared up the 13-inch Macbook (simply Macbook, without the Pro) with Intel’s Core Duo processors. Quite confusing, no? But there’s a difference between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo, says my geek friend Jason.
And although it took a long time coming, industry observers welcomed the arrival of the suddenly more-powerful, quietly-announced Macbook Pros. Pricing? For the 15-inch 2.16 GHz model it’s $2,000, the 2.33 GHz 15-inch sets you back $2,500. The 17-inch MacBook Pro, which is available starting next week is priced at $2,800.
Tip for PC users who have been itching to try out the Mac: now’s a good time to do it, and when you do take a look at previous models. They are now suddenly much cheaper with the arrival of the new ones. Bonus if you get the previously released 13-inch Macbook with Core Duo: they run Windows too, natively.
Now, isn’t life wonderful?
[Site: Apple]
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