The professional-strength laptop gets a trackpad, and all the laptops get an update to Intel's Penryn chip.
Apple today announced an incremental update to their Macbook and Macbook Pro laptop lines. Most significantly, the Macbook Pro will get the multi-touch trackpad that we've been enjoying on the Macbook Air. Unfortunately, Macbook buyers won't see the same trackpad as the pro models, as Apple has inexplicably decided not to update that machine's pad. Perhaps Apple thought a 13-inch laptop with multi-touch would cannibalize sales of the Macbook Air?
In any case, both the Macbook and the Macbook Pro will also see upgrades to Intel's most recent mobile processors, code-named Penryn, at clock speeds up to 2.6GHz in the build-to-order options of the Pro model. Available hard disk drive capacities will also see a boost, and Macbook buyers will be able to stock their machines with HDDs up to 250GB, while Pro customers will have a 300GB option.
On the Pro side, the 17-inch Macbook Pro will be available with an LED-backlit screen, which provides instant-on brightness for the display, an cuts down on some of the nasty chemicals used in normal laptop screens. For graphics, the Pro models still use the Nvidia 8600 card, but get a video RAM boost up to 512MB.
The new devices appear to have the same basic look as yesterday's model. Apple has also continued its strange pricing policy of charging $100 premium for the black Macbook model.
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