TechCast Reviews

14th October 2008

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View the streaming keynote at http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0810rtdws876/event/index.html

Apple on 14th October, held the ‘Spotlight turns to notebooks’ event at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters where the entire notebook range gets refreshed and the introduction of a new display product featuring LED-backlight makes its debut.

The event kick started with a run down of the sales figures for Macs year-to-date, and one of the key points that was pulled out by Tim Cook, Chief Operating Officer at Apple, is that sales for the first three quarters of FY’08 totalled the entire sales of ’07. Impressive considering the peak Christmas shopping season hasn’t quite arrived yet.

Jony Ives then took the stage to talk about the manufacturing process for the MacBook Air. It has been long rumoured that a new manufcturing process is to be introduced to the new range of portable Macs, dubbed ‘the brick’. Ives was able to confirm this when he described how the manufacturing process for the MacBook Air starts with a “thick piece of aluminium”.

Steve retakes the stage to talk about the new NVIDIA chipset and GPU on one die, resulting in performance five times faster than what Intel have with their current generation of integrated graphics. This new chipset is called the GeForce 9400M with 70-percent of the chip belonging to the GPU that delivers 16 parallel graphics cores delivering 54 Gflops of performance.

The performance of this new chipset is reinforced when Steve displays the slide comparing Intel’s integrated solution with the 9400M. Call of Duty performs 6.2x better and 2.8x for you WoW fans. When compared with the currently shipping 8600M GT in the MacBook Pro, the 9400M is 55-percent of the equivalent 3D graphics performance.

With the introduction of Mini DisplayPort on all portable Macs, each new notebook can now support Dual-Link displays for resolutions up to 2560 x 1600, a feature that was only available to MacBook Pro’s previously. So feel free to go and attach a 30-inch Cinema Display to the MacBook Air.

Next slide brings up the trackpad. A huge button-less, multitouch-enabled, glass trackpad. There’s several bonus words there, mainly that it’s button-less and made of glass for “silky-smooth travel.”

The entire trackpad is just a piece of glass with the entire trackpad becoming the button. According to the first reports back from those at the event, the trackpad has tactile feedback when you push down on it.

Settings in the Software Preferences pane will allow you control how the button on the trackpad works, and finally, a solution to Steve’s long-lived problem, a multi-button trackpad for the portable Mac! Portable Macs have always had just the single mouse button for simplicity and minimalism in design, therefore prioritising form over function. Multi-fingered gestures are available with ‘combo moves’ using up to four fingers at a time.

What we’ve all been waiting for is the introduction of the new MacBook Pro and possibly MacBook. Steve starts with the new MacBook Pro.

It pretty much confirms that the leaked pictures were indeed real. Glossy LED-backlit display (no matte option available), black frame around the screen, black backlit keyboard, that massive trackpad and a slightly tapered design similar to the MacBook Air. All of the connections on the MacBook Pro are now on the one side.

The rumours of a dual graphics solution are proven to be true with the new MacBook Pro hardware configurations featuring the onboard 9400M chipset and GPU combo as well as the addition of the 9600M GT with dedicated 256MB/512MB memory. Five hours of battery life with the former and four with the latter.

FireWire lovers need not worry about the removal of the port with FireWire 800 still available. A battery indicator is now integrated in to the side of the chassis for quick access to your battery level. The other noticeable change to the chassis is the user-serviceable hard drive which sits right next to the battery. Simply remove the bottom cover and take it out – much easier than what I had to go through recently to upgrade my MBP with a 500GB drive.

The new MacBook Pro is now only 0.95-inches in thickness. At less than an inch thick, this makes it the slimmest MacBook Pro they’ve ever shipped.

Two configurations are available for the new MacBook Pro. For the entry level model, you’ll get a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo with 3MB L2 cache, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 RAM, and the 9400M + 9600M GT with 256MB and 250GB hard drive.

The higher-end model will run with a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo chip backed by 6MB of L2 cache and 4GB of 1066MHz DDR3 memory, a 9400M + 9600M GT with 512MB and a 320GB hard drive.

It seems like we’re going for a lucky three, but it also appears that the 17-inch MacBook Pro isn’t ready for the prime time as Steve moves on to talk about the MacBook Air.

Slightly revised specs can be found in the Air with the 9400M chipset, a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo with 6MB L2 cache and 120GB SATA drive or 128GB SSD option.

The second model gives you a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo with 6MB L2 cache and a 128GB SSD drive as standard. The RAM unfortunately stays the same on both models with 2GB but speed-bumped to 1066MHz DDR3.

The Cinema Display finally gets a makeover. However it only applies to the new 24-inch model. The display uses LED backlight technology and the cabling has been changed to include a MagSafe connector for powering your notebook, USB port and Mini Display Port – note that there’s no FireWire!

Using a design mirroring the MacBook Pro and iMac, the new 24-inch display is glossy-only and has a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 resolution, featuring built-in stereo speakers, iSight camera and microphone and a three-port USB 2.0 hub at the back for $899.

I guess this means you can’t get the new display for the current MacBook or MacBook Pro notebooks unless you get the optional adapter. The price also makes it significantly more expensive than many other 24-inch displays however this is one of, if not, the first 24-inch display to be LED-backlit.

Not content with finishing on the display, Steve uses his trademark “one more thing” teaser. Everyone can guess at this point what this might be. It’s the new MacBook of course – Apple’s number one selling notebook.

Steve announces a price drop from $1099 to $999. Not quite the $899 that so many analysts, experts and rumours suggested. But I hardly think it will be the downfall of Apple’s sales figures even if the economy is down the drain, despite what analysts say.

It appears that they’re not removing the current design completely. They’ve introduced two new models that sits on top of the “white plastic model” similar to the MacBook Pro only smaller since the new MacBook does have a much higher starting price. Using that same design formula with the slightly curved edges and black iMac frame, the new MacBook uses an LED backlit display, glass trackpad and uses the new 9400M chipset. All this for just $1299 with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo 3MB L2 cache, 2GB of 1066MHz DDR RAM and 160GB hard drive.

A second model is available at $1599 comes with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 250GB hard drive and a backlit keyboard. Notice how they left out the backlit keyboard on the $1299 model.

At the end of the event, a showcase video featuring Apple’s new production line for the new Macs is played.

The event wraps up with the last slide showing Steve’s blood pressure at 110/70 and a Q&A session with Steve, Tim and Phil where they answer a few questions about Blu-Ray, what happened to the 17-inch MacBook Pro, why no HDMI, why only glossy, will there be an Apple netbook and why no touchscreen.

All images courtesy of Apple Inc.