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New Apple MacBooks offer more

by on15 October 2008

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Steve Jobs hints at a future without him

In a departure from presentations past, Steve Jobs hinted today that Apple is much more than Steve Jobs. Apple will continue after he leaves the company and the people that will then be at the helm share his vision, and today he started laying that groundwork as the launch involved more people than just Jobs showing off the latest from Apple.

As for what Apple did show today, we already told you what we already knew would happen. If we could sum up the entire MacBook launch today it would be in one word: “power.” The focus was more of an evolution of the MacBook product line featuring more powerful MacBooks.

With all of the new MacBooks being powered by Nvidia chipsets and graphics, and using the latest Intel processors, Apple was free to innovate by reducing the size at every turn and showing off new sexy aesthetics that the company is known for.

As for what they will be offering, Apple showed off a new 13-inch MacBook, a 15-inch all new aluminum MacBook Pro, and a revised MacBook Air. As for shattering the price barrier, Apple didn’t quite dip as low as many would have liked, but they did turn the old MacBook into value model that will check in at $999. This model will continue the white plastic tradition and not share the advanced “brick” aluminum carving process that will be used for the higher-end models.

The majority of the new MacBooks will offer a 128GB SSD as an option. In addition, Apple will offer the 24” wide screen LCD for $899 that we already told you about, except it will include a built-in iSight camera.

The MacBook Air was the one area that we didn’t know a lot about as to what Apple would tell us. What we found out is that they will offer a new 120GB hard disk with the option of a 128GB SSD drive. It will use the new precision aluminum manufacturing “brick craving process” and it will sizzle with Nvidia graphics. There is no built-in cellular connectivity, which was a bit disappointing, but, hey, they made it thinner.

Overall, there is not really much to get excited about, but the innovative “brick carving process” is a big innovation that will certainly find its way into other products in the future. The switch to Nvidia has helped Apple reduce the footprint of the motherboard inside the MacBook, and at the same time gain some performance advantages. We suspect that we will see more of Apple’s work with the aluminum “brick carving process” to show up in future products, but it still is expensive, which means the price will stay about the same.

Last modified on 15 October 2008
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