MacMost Now 146: New Line of MacBooks

Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at today's announcements of new MacBooks, MacBook Pros, MacBook Air and new Cinema Display.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary of MacMost Now. Let's take a look at today's announcements and the entire new line of MacBooks.
Today at Apple headquarters Steve Jobs and his team made a whole set of announcements including new MacBook Pros, new MacBooks, new MacBook Air and a new display. Let's take a look.
So basically there are four new features to the MacBook line. The first is an entire new manufacturing process. Apple says they're going to be making their MacBooks, MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros out of a single piece of aluminum which they carve out and so create a stronger and lighter MacBook. In addition, there's also a new graphic chip set. Something new from Invidea in two different flavors is going to be in all of these laptops and it's going to be up to five times faster than the integrated Intel chip set that had been in there previously although probably only slightly faster than some of the Invidea chip sets that have been in previous versions of the MacBook.
In addition to that, we've also got a new trackpad. So this new trackpad is going to be made out of glass and it's going to support multi-touch; up to four fingers can be used for different gestures and even simulating multiple buttons. In addition to that the entire thing's actually going to be a button itself. You can press it down and that acts as the single button that we're used to finding above or below current trackpads.
In addition to that we've also got a new thing called a mini display port. So instead of having DVI ports on some Macs and a miniport on some others we're going to have this mini display port which will support just about any kind of video display up to 30 inches, depending upon the internal video memory that you have in your machine.
So for the MacBook Pros we're going to have two different flavors. One is a $2000 machine that's going to feature a 2.4 GHz processor, 250-gig hard drive and also comes with two gigs of ram. In addition, there'll be a $2499 version of the machine which will have a 2.53 gig processor, a bigger hard drive at 320 gigs and 4 gigs of ram. These machines are going to come with a nice, glass, glossy screen as well and they're going to come in just under an inch thick. In addition, you're going to have an option for a solid-state drive and also for a 2.8 GHz in the Pros.
So the new MacBooks are also going to come in two flavors. There's going to be a $1299 version that comes with a 2.0 GHz processor and a 160 gig hard drive also a more expensive $1599 version that comes with a 2.4 GHz processor and a 250 gig hard drive. Now these new MacBooks are made of aluminum just like the MacBook Pros so there'll be less of a visual difference between the MacBooks and the MacBook Pros.  Another difference between the MacBooks Pros and the MacBooks will have a fire wire port on the side which also could be used as fire wire 400 with an adaptor. Won't be any such thing on the MacBook. It was also announced that the MacBook Airs are going to be updated. They're going to include the new mini display, the new trackpad and also the new Invidea graphics chip set.
The announcement today actually will leave two older MacBooks around. The white plastic MacBook will be on sale for $999 and also the 17 inch MacBook Pros will still be available in their old configurations, although in a question and answer session after the press conference today Jobs said that those will be updated soon.
A somewhat separate announcement is for a new cinema display. This is going to be a 24-inch cinema display which will display 1920 by 1200 pixels and it will feature speakers, isight and a microphone and it's actually being touted on the website by right now as the perfect additional display if you have a MacBook.
So that just about wraps it up. A lot of these things are shipping right now or tomorrow. Some, like the display and the MacBook Airs, won't be shipping until November so check Apple.com for release dates.
Until next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

MacMost Now 146: New Line of MacBooks

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