Apple announces new MacBooks

By Craig Simms on 27 February 2008

Apple announced its new MacBook and MacBook Pros today, bringing the lines up to speed with the latest hardware.

New for the MacBook Pro is the multi-touch touchpad first featured on the MacBook Air, allowing you to manipulate things like photos in a much more intuitive way, resizing and rotating with an appropriate flick.

The 17-inch MacBook now also has an option for an LED screen, although prospective buyers will have to opt for the high resolution screen to get it.

On the components side, Apple has gone to the latest 45nm Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, which were codenamed "Penryn". All the MacBook Pros feature an NVIDIA 8600M GT graphics card -- the lower model featuring 256MB video RAM, the two higher 512MB.

The MacBook received a more modest upgrade, including the aforementioned Penryn processor and larger hard drives. Embarrassingly, despite the component being amazingly cheap the lowest model still does not feature a DVD burner by default, nor is the option available from the online store to add one.

Despite Blu-Ray's recent victory, Apple has also not included an option for a Blu-ray drive -- although we'd argue this is not necessary at this stage for the majority of consumers, and would expect it to perhaps crop up in the next refresh for the high-end MacBook Pros.

The baseline MacBook starts at AU$1,499, the MacBook Pro at AU$2,699, and both those and other updated configurations are available now from the Apple Store.

Topics: apple, macbook, macbook pro

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Comments (8)

  • raz commented on 16/05/2008 13:03 Report abuse

    Amazgin Book Just Love it~

  • ASH commented on 10/03/2008 19:42 Report abuse

    well i don't know much about laptops BUT on the add for the new apple mac, the song is really cool and i've tried soooooo hard to find it so just wondering if i could be helped out a lil hahahahahaha

  • username commented on 28/02/2008 16:38 Report abuse

    There is no such thing as a 17 inch Macbook.

  • badapples commented on 28/02/2008 10:52 Report abuse

    Still overpriced tho! With the exchange rate now at 94c Aussies are being ripped off compared to the USA prices.

  • username commented on 27/02/2008 16:57 Report abuse

    The 17-inch MacBook now also has an option for an LED screen

  • blklacker commented on 27/02/2008 16:35 Report abuse

    I need a blu ray drive. I refuse to purchase apple product until they add HD opitical burners in their hardware

  • Craig Simms commented on 27/02/2008 11:30 Report abuse

    Thanks, the article has been updated.

  • canberra_photographer commented on 27/02/2008 11:12 Report abuse

    Guys, 15" MBP has had a LED backlit screen as standard for a long time now, nothing new.

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