Apple launches new MacBooks, makes the Air more price competitive

Darius Chang | Jun 09, 2009

Apple did it again. While most of the tech industry expected the Cupertino company to focus on the iPhone at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple instead started the show by introducing a new design for its 15-inch MacBook Pros, promoting the unibody 13.3-inch MacBook to the MacBook Pro family and implementing price cuts across its laptop lineup.

The 13.3-inch machines, which used to belong to the MacBook range, have been upgraded to MacBook Pro status as they now sport a FireWire 800 port and backlit keyboard as standard features. Previously, only the high-end MacBooks have the latter feature. It can also be decked out with up to 8GB of RAM and 500GB storage capacity, though unlike its larger siblings the 13.3-inch machines will only come with the integrated Nvidia graphics processors with no option for discrete video cards.

From here on out, non-removable batteries will be the norm for Apple portables. It claims that this is not only better for the environment as its power cells can last up to five years, but by integrating the battery it can provide a longer uptime of up to 7 hours.

Another interesting design change is that, for the first time in the company's history, it is including a memory card slot in its 15-inch and 13.3-inch MacBook Pros. Though this is a positive step in the right direction, we wondered why Apple decided to take out the ExpressCard slot in the process. Moreover, the memory card reader can only accept the SD format, leaving those with Memory Stick and xD-Picture Card media to rely on third-party USB devices. Only the 17-inch MacBook Pro now comes with an ExpressCard slot.

But if the new integrated batteries and redesign have you reaching for your wallets, an even better news awaits. The 13.3-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros have new lower starting prices of S$1,988 (US$1,423.46) (down from S$2,088 (US$1,495.06)), S$2,788 (US$1,996.28) (down from S$3,188 (US$2,282.69)) and S$4,088 (US$2,927.11) (down from S$4,388 (US$3,141.92)), respectively. The harddisk and SSD versions of the MacBook Air have also been given some wallet love and now starts at S$2,488 (US$1,781.47) (down from S$2,888 (US$2,067.88)) and S$2,988 (US$2,139.48) (down from S$3,988 (US$2,855.51)). This represents significant savings and is a welcome move during an economic recession.

At the same time, the Cupertino company showcased the followup to the Mac OS X Leopard, Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Though its not a total redesign of the operating system, there are enough new perks to warrant its US$29 upgrade price tag (US$49 for the family pack).

First off, Snow Leopard is a 64-bit operating system, which means that the memory limit is now a whopping 16GB, as opposed to a miserable 3GB for a 32-bit OS. It is also significantly faster than its predecessor and includes new features such as the new Safari 4 Web browser and integrated Microsoft Exchange support. The multitouch trackpad can now double as a tablet, as the system can now digitalize user handwriting on the touchpad.

Despite all these new features and performance increase, we were surprised that the new operating system not only installs 45 percent faster, but also takes up half the footprint of the previous version. This translates to a significant 6GB of harddisk space saved.

The Mac OS X Snow Leopard will start shipping in September this year, while the new 15-inch and 13-inch MacBook Pros are available immediately.

Filed under: Notebooks
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Devlin

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Devlin says...
"...which means that the memory limit is now a whopping 16GB..."

Darius, you might want to go over the Keynote again because according to Bertrand Serlet 64-bit enables 16 billion GB of memory.

Jun 09, 2009 12:33