All Forces

So here they are. The iBooks get the Intel treatment along with a slick new design that comes in black and white flavors. For an Apple geek, days like this, when Apple releases new products, is like like a holiday. It usually means I spend countless hours dissecting specs, reading commentaries online and discussing it with friends to no end. But since I am busy with some projects at hand, today I am doing a concise version of it.

The most obvious change in the new lineup, other than the new MacBook name is the fact that they come in black and white. I’m sure the success of the black iPod had much to do with this. Apple knows these will be hot and are pricing them at $200 more with a slightly larger hard drive. They new laptops come only in 13″, as opposed to the iBook’s 12″ and 14″. The Pro laptops on the other hand comes in 15″ and 17″. When the Pro laptops came out earlier in the year, it was assumed that the 12″ was not released probably because of part supplies, similar to the Powerbook when it first came out with a 15″ only. But I have the feeling that the 12″ MacBook Pro is never coming. There are three quotes from Philip Schiller that stand out “We have now completed our portable transition and we’re incredibly excited about the new MacBook,” “Nobody should feel like they have to step down when you buy a MacBook” and “You don’t trade-off much in features between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro” – via MacWorld. This leads me to believe Apple has a new strategy with their portables.

Choosing between a consumer and pro laptop always meant some serious compromises in speed and features. But that is just not the case with the new line up. If we look closer at the specs we notice they both have 2MB L2 cache, 667MHz System Bus, built in Airport, built in Bluetooth, built in iSight camera, are an inch thick, have a 2Gig max ram, have aMagSafe power connector, DVI/VGA, video mirroring, support for cinema displays, brighter glossy screen, super drive, combined optical digital input/audio line in, combined optical digital output/headphone out, huge hard drives and remote control for Front Row. The only features, that I could notice are not in the consumer model are the Express Card slot, the massive 256mb dual DVI video card, backlit keyboard and a few extra usb/firewire ports available only in the 17″. On the other side, the MacBook is now the only one offering composite s-video output and also all models come with the new glossy brighter screen which are optional on the pro models.

I love this new approach Apple is taking on the portable line. Getting a consumer model should not equal getting an inferior machine, it should just lack a few things that are not essential to the consumer. I’m sad to see the 12″ go away but a 13″ might be a welcomed upgrade. We’ll have to see how it feels. Although support for cinema displays is a welcomed overdue feature, the 32mb video card which is the one in the mac mini, is a bit skimpy and there’s no option to upgrade.