That’s it! Finally, the rumor mills have stopped yammering with their rumors (rumors confuse me so much, and deceive when you actually see the real product) and the new notebooks are currently out for sale. Let’s start with the MacBook Pro. They really changed the design of the new MBP, adding a black glass contour around the screen (very similar to the iMac) that make the colors pop out. The keyboard has also adopted the black color, adopting the same keyboard as the old generation MacBook ( I liked the old MBP keyboard…). When purchasing the baseline model at 1999$, you get plenty bang for the buck: A 15 inch glossy display, a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (wow), 2 GBs of DDR3 RAM (why not 4 Apple, why?), a Nvidia GeoForce 9400 M and a 9600M GT which is the card you switch to for high performance, and finally, a 250 GB drive. You can also chose as an option to take a 128 GB SSD instead of the regular HDDs, and also as an option, upgrade your processor to up to 2.8 GHz which really gives you a kick-ass machine. I am a bit disappointed that the price has stayed at the same sky high price but I can understand why ( It’s supposed to be a pro machine, right?). I will probably take the baseline 1999$ model around end of January-ish. To sum it up, the MacBook Pro is what we expected it to be, the kick ass pro notebook machine, with the same outraging price ( I know, you must think I live in misery to care about price as much as I do). Now on to the new MacBooks, which got the exact same design as the new MacBook Pros and the price has increased by 200$. Another odd choice Apple made is to retain the old white MacBook (the one I currently have) and sell it a 999$ price-point. This move isn’t really the kind of thing Apple would do in regular times. I mean, Apple, couldn’t you just create a new sub-thousand dollar notebook for the masses? Instead of taking an old product and clearing the available stock? I overall liked the notebook related announcements, but still, some disappointment is in the air…
October 17, 2008 at 7:09 am |
Apple, thanks so much for the touchscreen we all wanted, and the blu-ray drive and the HDMI output. Thanks for the ugly black-framed screens and horrid black keyboards. Thanks for offering a new mac mini with current standard parts and priced reasonably for a desktop. *sigh, you are so smart, Apple, the way you offer what customers actually want.