All the details of the new MacBook Pros are now on the Apple website and offer few surprises after all the frenzied rumours of the past couple of weeks. While we are not likely to see radically redesigned MBPs until next year (taking some of their styling cues from the twin Airs) the improvements introduced today are a welcome incremental upgrade to the existing models. The new processors, starting with the Intel Core i5 on the base 13in model, offer a substantial increase in performance. There is now much more reason to buy the 13in MacBook Pro over the slower MacBook Air .
For me, the most significant news is the introduction of the fast Thunderbolt I/O enabling speeds over 12 times that of FireWire 800 and 20 times that of USB 2.0. At a stroke Apple have just leapfrogged USB 3.0 and I doubt that we will now see this interface as standard on future Macs:
"The Thunderbolt port will give you plug-and-play performance with a whole new world of Thunderbolt peripherals, as well as with the Apple LED Cinema Display and other Mini DisplayPort peripherals. You can daisy-chain up to six devices, including your display. And with support for video and eight-channel audio, it’s easy to connect HDMI-compatible devices — like your TV and home stereo — using the HDMI adapter you already have. Current VGA, DVI and DisplayPort adapters are also supported."
If you want further details on the new models read the official line or follow these links:
Technorati Tags: MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Thunderbolt