14 October 2008 @ 11:12Apple’s Special Notebook Event

Last quarter, 2.5 million Macs were sold, and the last several quarters have seen double and triple market growth.

Apple retail stores see an average of 400,000 visitors a day. 50% of the Macs sold at retail stores are to new Mac customers.

Macs at major universities has increased from 15% to 50%.

In Q1-Q3 2008, sales are already equal to all of 2007 sales.

Jonathan Ive talks about designing and building laptops. He talks about how difficult it is to build something as thin and as strong as the MacBook Pro. He says that Apple has found a better way to build a laptop — from a solid piece of aluminum, rather than from thin sheets of aluminum.

A 2.5-pound piece of aluminum is machined down to a quarter of a pound.

Next, video cards. The NVIDIA GeForce 9400 M is chipset and GPU on one die, and capable of 54gigaflops of performance. The 8600M is capable of only 55% of the performance that the NVIDIA GeForce 9400 M is capable of.

Next new feature — multi-touch, glass trackpad. It is 39% larger than previous trackpads, and the entire trackpad surface acts as a button. Trackpad is capable of gestures using four fingers.

Put all this into the new MacBook Pro — glass display, connectors all on one side, precision aluminum unibody, LED-backlit keyboard, Mini DisplayPort connector, magnetic latch, sudden motion sensor.

Back to graphics. Did I understand this correctly? The MacBook Pro will include two video cards — the NVIDIA 9400M and the NVIDIA 9600M GT. The NVIDIA 9600M GT is state of the art, has 32 parallel graphics cores, 120 gigaflops, 512MB GDDR3. 5 hours of battery life with the 9400M and 4 hours with the 9600M GT.

The new Mini DisplayPort can drive any display that the old mini-DVI port could, but at a mere fraction of the port size.

The MacBook Pro will also be available for the first time with an SSD. Drives can be accessed from under the battery.

Battery indicator has been moved to the side of the body.

New body of MacBook Pro is only 0.95 inches thick.

MacBook Pro will come in two models, $1999 for 15.4″ LED-backlit display, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo/3MB L2, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 memory, both NVIDIA chips, 250GB hard drive, slot-loading superdrive

The other MacBook Pro model is $2499, 15.4″ screen, 2.53GHz, 6MB L2, can upgrade any model to 2.8GHz

Both models will begin shipping today from the Apple Store.

The MacBook Air also gets updated. It will have the new NVIDIA 9400M graphics, a larger 120GB hard drive, Mini DisplayPort. Available today from the Apple Store.

Another new product. 24 inch Cinema Display. The new display features LED-backlighting. It also features a MagSafe connector and a USB connector, 1920×1200 resolution, built-in iSight, built-in stereo speakers, 3-port USB hub for only $899. Available in November.

Now, on to the MacBook. It is already the best-selling Mac ever. Price is reduced from $1099 to $999.

New model will be added to the MacBook lineup — a 13.3 inch MacBook with unibody metal enclosure, “just like the Pro, but smaller”

Next-gen MacBook will feature LED backlit display, glass trackpad, Mini DisplayPort connector, NVIDIA 9400M graphics, 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 3MB L2, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 memory, 160GB hard drive, slot-loading SuperDrive. Price will be $1299. Another model is available with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 3MB L2, 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 memory, 250GB hard drive, slot-loading SuperDrive, and backlit keyboard for $1599. Both are shipping today from the Apple Store.

Upgrades to the MacBook include, 4GB memory, 320GB hard drive, 128GB SSD, DVI, Dual-DVI and VGA adapters.

All these features in the new MacBook add up to $700 savings over what was previously available in the MacBook Pro line.

Q&A with Phil Schiller, Steve Jobs, and Tim Cook answers some questions.
No, Blu-ray drive. Steve said, “Blu-ray is a bag of hurt. The licensing of the technology is so complex that we’re just waiting until things settle down and waiting until Blu-ray really takes off in the marketplace before we burden our customers with the cost of the licensing and the drives.”
No, HDMI. Mini DisplayPort connector provides greater resolution capability and is the “connector of the future”.
17-inch MacBook Pro is being refreshed as well.
Will we see a netbook from Apple? Steve said, “In terms of netbooks, that’s a nascent market that’s just getting started.”
Will we see touchscreens in Apple laptops? Right now it doesn’t make sense.
Will there be an option for a matte screen? Steve said, “We’re going straight glass. A few of our customers prefer matte screens, but a vast majority prefer glass because of brighter colors, etc.”

See product photos below.

New MacBook