David Flynn21 October 2009, 10:34 AM
At just $1,299 the new 13.3 inch MacBook is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever, and takes aim at the hearts and wallets at the ‘switchers’ who are ready to move from Windows.
We have no doubts that at some point, Apple’s design meetings on the new 13.3 inch MacBook – now the sole member of the laptop family without the ‘Pro’ suffix – must have sounded like the introduction to
The Six Million Dollar Man.
Like the bionic ex-astronaut Steve Austin, Apple has taken its classic white MacBook and rebuilt it. They had the technology – much of it developed for the MacBook Pro line – so they made the MacBook faster, stronger.
But they also made it cheaper. At $1,299, the white MacBook is Apple’s most affordable laptop ever (in the US it breaks through the all-important psychological ‘four figure’ barrier to hit US$999).
And as with today’s new
iMac, you pay a lot less – a $300 saving over the previous-gen MacBook – while getting a lot more.
Some key specs have predictably been given a bump: a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo (up from 2.13GHz) and a 250GB hard drive (formerly 160GB). Memory remains unchanged: this was already sitting at 2GB, which is sufficient for the fleet-footed Mac OS X 10.6.
The real changes are more obvious at first glance. While the chassis remains cast from white polycarbonate, this is now produced using the same one-piece unibody technology as the aluminium MacBook Pro series.
This makes for a far more robust shell with minimal flex around the edges and under the keyboard, and which can hopefully withstand just a bit more rough and tumble than its predecessor. It’s also a smidge lighter, coming in a 2.1Kg over the previous 2.27Kg.
Locked within the chassis is the same 60Whr non-removable battery as in the 13.3 inch MacBook Pro, which Apple rates at seven hours (using wireless) between recharges, a two-hour boost over the previous model with the removable 55Whr battery.
Other bits of hand-me-down technology are the glass multi-touch trackpad, the LED screen backlighting and the Mini DisplayPort socket for video output.
The all-up effect is that there’s no mistaking the MacBook as being the kid bother to the MacBook Pro. So what’s missing?
The FireWire 400 port, for one – although the target audience for the new MacBook would likely see that port gathering cobwebs. They’ll be more concerned with the omission of the SD Card reader slot, which we think is a terribly churlish decision by Apple.
Another minor tweak is the introduction of a combined audio in/out jack to replace the previously separate headphone and line in sockets.