Apple unleashes new MacBook Pro range

Life

25 February 2011

Apple has updated its MacBook Pro range of notebooks with newer graphics and CPU components, using Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge chipsets.

The company claims the entire new MacBook Pro range is up to twice as fast as the previous generation. In addition to new processor and graphics chips, the latest MacBook Pro notebooks also feature high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology based on Intel’s Light Peak technology, larger hard drives and a new FaceTime HD camera.

Thunderbolt features two bi-directional channels with transfer speeds up to 10Gb/s and can support standard FireWire and USB devices, along with Gigabit Ethernet networks via adapters. The technology supports DisplayPort and works with existing adapters for HDMI, DVI and VGA displays. The new Macbook Pro also includes an SDXC-compatible SD card slot, allowing memory cards of up to 2Tb capacity to be used.

The 13″ Macbook Pro has the same screen resolution – the 1280×800 pixels – as its predecessor, and once again comes with 4Gb RAM. The 13″ variant of the Apple MacBook Air has a higher quality 1440×900 pixel display.

The base model 13″ MacBook Pro (2.3GHz i5 processor, 320Gb hard drive) has a price tag of €1,199, while the second configuration 13″ model (2.7GHz i5 processor, 500Gb hard drive) costs €1,499.

The new 15″ MacBook Pro is available in two models; one with a 2GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor, AMD Radeon HD 6490M graphics and a 500Gb hard drive (€1,799), and the other with a 2.2GHz quad core Intel Core i7 processor, AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics and a 750GB hard drive (€2,199).

The 17″ MacBook Pro has a 2.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor, AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics and a 750Gb hard drive and is priced at €2,499.

In a separate development, Apple has dropped the retail version of its MobileMe cloud service. Users will still be able to sign up to a free trial and plans continue for a $1 billion data centre to open some time this spring. It’s understood new variants of the service will offer a new tiered subscription model.

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