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Apple has introduced the new MacBook Pro family, featuring some sparkling new tech and significantly different specs from the previous generation, but remaining much the same on the outside. There are five models split between the three sizes – two 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros, and one 17-inch MacBook Pro – and all of them will feature Intel’s Sandy Bridge chips, in Core i5 and i7 variants. Pricing is much lower than last years, with the base model costing Rs. 69,990.
The MacBook Pro family also introduces Intel’s first iteration of Light Peak technology, the dual-channel I/O ‘Thunderbolt’, which promises up to 10 Gbps bi-directional transfer speeds. Read more on Thunderbolt, here. But while MacBook Pro notebooks are available with Thunderbolt right now, devices supporting them will only arrive in the latter part of the year. Many major storage manufacturers however, have vowed support for both Thunderbolt and other future Light Peak technologies.
All the MacBook Pro laptops also ship with a FireWire 800 port on board, while the 17-inch model has an Express Card/34 slot instead of a SDXC card slot.
Apple’s latest generation of MacBook Pro laptops differ from last in two other major aspects – they feature AMD Mobility Radeon graphics (6000M) instead of Nvidia’s offering, and, have new Face Time HD cameras for video-chat, which offer 3 times the resolution as their iSight predecessors, promising full HD video conferencing. Face Time for Mac has also been released, available for 99 cents on the Mac Store. All the laptops feature LED backlit screens, with a choice of glossy or anti-glare coating (not in 13-inch models). The 15-inch models also come with a choice of 1680x1050 high resolution screens, instead of the 1440x900 default.
Importantly, the 13-inch MacBook Pro models do not feature discrete graphics, but apparently, Apple and Intel are confident the Sandy Bridge assisted Intel HD 3000 graphics will be up to the challenge.