The image of Apple has moved from "Mac" to "iDevices" in the recent years. Apple once known in the niche segment for its Mac line of computers and laptops has reached the mass-market with its iPod and iOS products. Today the MacBook Pro
lineup was upgraded behind the scenes, while all the high profile announcements get reserved for iOS devices.MacBook Pros line up are powerful systems, but definitely had fallen behind with rest up of the industry when it comes to hardware specification. The refresh today was pretty much on expected lines bringing most of the recent hardware specs and one new specification.
The new MacBook Pro lineup will be powered with Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 processors, AMD Radeon HD 6000M graphics (transitioning from NVIDIA), FaceTime HD Cameras and Thunderbold I/O tranfer port (instead of USB 3.0) for higher data transfer speeds.
The design and appearance of the devices remain unchanged from the previous iterations. The 13 inch versions get dual-core processors, while the 15 inch and 17 inch versions get quad-core processors. In the Graphics specification the trend remains the same as only the 15 and 17 inch versions get the AMD refresh, while the 13 inch version has the integrated graphics from Intel.
Intel announced Thunderbolt (code named Lightpeak before) today and claims to support data transfer speeds of 10GBps and can use existing display port and PCI port. Apple had dismissed the support for USB 3.0 earlier and it was for this technology and it is integrated with the MacBook Pro devices. It will be interesting to see the adoption of this technology and hope this does not become yet another I/O port standard, which is meant for few products / releases.
The devices have HD camera for FaceTime, but the recent update is that FaceTime will be available from Mac AppStore for 99 cents. When the camera is integrated, it is not sure on the need to charge consumers for the software to use it.
When Apple announces new products, it normally finds some way to increase the battery life, but this time the combination of processing power and graphics ability seems to have the opposite effect. The claim for battery life seems to have come down from 10 hours to 7 hours on average.
The devices are ready for purchase, but for the premium price that is still a feature for these devices it remains to be for the niche segment.
Author: Vinod
Source: Engadget
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