Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company’s new high-end notebook line during the special event being held at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.
The new MacBook Pro will feature two graphic chipsets, the Nvidia GeForce 9400M embedded on the motherboard and the Nvidia GeForce 9600M as a discreet part. The graphics deliver 32 parallel graphics cores and 125 gigaflops of graphics performance. Jobs said that using the 9400M you get five hours of battery life and four hours with the 9600M.
Apple tests indicate the new graphics are five times faster than the integrated graphics of the current designs.
The MacBook Pro will also come with a newly designed trackpad. The multitouch glass trackpad has a 39 percent larger tracking area than before, according to Jobs. The entire trackpad will act as button, rather than having a separate button like the previous notebooks. Apple has also added to its arsenal of multitouch gestures, adding four-finger gestures with the latest release.
All of the connectors are on the left side of the MacBook Pro and features a unibody enclosure. Apple designer Jonathan Ive explained that Apple learned a lot when making the MacBook Air and used that knowledge to design the new MacBook Pro.
Of course, the MacBook Pro will have all the features you’ve come to expect from an Apple notebook like backlit keyboards, magnetic latch, motion sensor, speakers, iSight and microphone. Apple is also adding a mini display port on the new models.
A slot-loading SuperDrive will be on the right-hand side of the MacBook Pro.
At less than an inch thick the new MacBook Pro will come in two models. For US$1999 you get a 15.4-inch 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3MB L2cache, an LED-backlit display and 2GB 1066 MGhz DDR 3 memory, both Nvidia cards, a 250GB hard drive and the slot-loading SuperDrive.
The other model costs $2499 and comes with 2.53GHz processor, 6MB L2, 4GB of memory, 512MB on the Nvidia 9600M GT, 320GB hard drive.
