In the midst of the rumors and the upcoming launch of the iPad 2, Apple has silently refreshed its Macbook Pro line. Externally, there isn’t that much of a difference than previous unibody Macbook Pros except for one additional port with a lighting symbol. This “Thunderbolt” port, as Apple calls it seems to be an actual implementation of Intel’s Light Peak I/O technology. The Thunderbolt port, according to the specs, can reach up to 10Gbps which is important when transfering large pieces of data such as HD videos. Another external change is the camera above the display which is now the FaceTime HD camera for higher resolution video captures such apps such as FaceTime.
Internally, the changes are more drastic. First of, the new Macbook Pros now uses quad-core Sandy Bridge processors from Intel. With these processors users will be able to take advantage of the graphics core integrated into the processor itself which provides enough graphics performance while minimizing battery usage. For more graphics intensive applications, these MBPs will take advantage of AMD’s Radeon HD graphics chips for the 15″ and 17″ variants. These Macbook Pros also features automatics switching between the Sandy Bridge graphics to the Radeon graphics and vice versa to save on battery usage as with the previous MBPs. The 13″ MBP will only have Intel integrated HD Graphics. This is a drastic change as previous Macbook Pros used Nvidia chips for their discrete graphics.
The base 13″ Macbook Pro will have a 2.3GHz i5 dual core processor and previously stated will not have the AMD discrete graphics. It will come standard with 4GBs of RAM and 320GB hard drive. The higher model will have the dual core 2.7GHz i7 processor and an upgraded 500GB hard drive.
On the 15″ Macbook Pro, it will have a slower 2.0GHz i7 processor but with 2 additional cores making it a quad-core chip. with the same Intel HD Graphics and a 256MB AMD Radeon HD 6490M discrete chip with 4GBs of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. The higher end 15″ Macbook Pro will have the a 2.2GHz quad core processor with the option to go to 2.3GHz and 2MB more L3 cache. It will also have a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6750M for more graphics oomph and a 750GB hard drive.
The largest Macbook Pro will have the same specs as the higher end 15″ Macbook Pro but with a 17″ display sporting 1920×1200 resolutions.
All Macbook Pros will still last up to 7 hours while web browsing (that is, according to Apple) and will be priced between $1199 (approx. PhP52,500) to $2499 (109,500).
