Apple has ditched removable batteries from its entire MacBook Pro range, but is promising massively improved battery ilfe as a result.
iPhone 3G S might have been the item that focused most people's attention at Apple's WWDC lovefest last week, but it also unveiled a
new 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro. The new MacBook Pro has a built-in battery that the user can’t remove (at least without removing a bunch of screws) just like the current 17-inch unibody Mac.
The new Lithium Polymer battery inside the new Mac is said to last for 1000 recharges, which should last for between one to three years depending on how heavily you use your notebook, and under ideal conditions the notebook will run for about seven hours. It will be interesting to see how this stacks up in real life, because Apple claimed five hours of "real life wireless productivity" for its previous generation MacBook Pro, and in our "real life" usage, this was more like 2.5 hours.
The machine has added an SD card reader, but has dropped the ExpressCard slot. The latter change is interesting, because Apple still hasn't shipped a notebook with integrated 3G, and this means that the only option for Mac users wanting to get online with mobile broadband will be USB memory-key style modems which have a tendency to be knocked or wobble, or (surprise, surprise) the iPhone 3G/3G S. Many people prefer ExpressCard modems because they protrude much less from the computer and have a more snug connection -- but perhaps Apple's hope is that if they delay the inevitable of integrating 3G into the notebooks for long enough, they'll get more people signed up to the iPhone as a mobile data solution.
The starting price is $2,699 and the rig sports a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, GeForce 9400M graphics, 250GB HDD, and the SD card slot I mentioned.
Above: the new MacBook Pro familyThose with a larger budget can drop $3,199 and get a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo; 4GB RAM, 9400M and 9600M GT graphics, 320GB HDD, and the SD card slot.
For $3,699 the high-end rig gets a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, 9400M and 9600M GT graphics, 500GB HDD, and the SD card slot.
If you're dead-set on having the fastest possible notebook, you can order the 2.8GHz model with a 3.06GHz processor upgrade for another $436.36. Apple's still not offering a 7200RPM 500GB hard drive option, though, which suggests that the drives aren't passing Apple's quality or efficiency tests for some reason (or that manufacturers can't produce them in adequate volumes yet.)
The 17-inch MacBook stays the same, but gets a price cut to $3,999.
Other interesting additions are a new MacBook Air starting at a recession-realism price of $2,399 and the fact that the 13-inch MacBook is now part of the Pro line, with a pro-quality LCD display rather than the crummy displays Apple has been using for years in the MacBook line.
We're still waiting on that rumour for about the larger MacBook Pro getting
quad-core processors to pan out -- it'll be coming at some point, but evidently Apple felt it could squeeze more life out of the Core 2 Duo with this incremental upgrade focusing around battery improvements.