Apple turns out new MacBook Pros; 15-in. models get LED screens

Computerworld - Apple Inc. freshened its top-end MacBook Pro laptop line today with Intel's latest processors and chip set, a.k.a. Santa Rosa, boosted memory to 2GB across the board and launched its first notebooks with LED-backlit screens.

The release beat analyst expectations by about a week.

All three new MacBook Pro models -- two with 15-in. displays, one with a 17-in. screen -- run the Santa Rosa platform's Intel Core 2 Duo processors at 2.2 GHz or 2.4 GHz, with 4MB of shared L2 cache and an 800-MHz frontside bus. Also part of the package: 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless. Another side benefit to the new processors is that they allow Mac OS X to access all 4GB of RAM if that much has been installed in the new MacBook Pro; earlier models' only showed 3GB+ to the operating system and applications when 4GB.

Apple's 15-in. MacBook Pros are its first to sport LED-backlit displays, technology that eliminates the trace mercury found in traditional fluorescent backlighting and also reduces power consumption. In a letter touting the company's environmental and recycling record last month, CEO Steve Jobs said Macs with LED-backlit LCDs would appear this year.

By default, the fluorescent-backlit 17-in. MacBook Pro offers a resolution of 1,680 by 1,050 pixels, but a new $100 optional 1,920-by-1,200 display is also available. Customers using MacBook Pros for professional photo and video editing wanted the higher resolution, said David Moody, an Apple vice president of marketing.

Now absent from the MacBook Pro are ATI graphics subsystems; they've been yanked in favor of Nvidia chip sets. That leaves only an overdue update to the iMac line with ATI video as standard. The change to Nvidia wasn't unexpected; almost immediately on Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s announcement that it would buy ATI Technologies Inc., speculation surfaced that Apple, already an Intel-based reseller, would drop ATI because of the AMD connection.

Moody would not comment on why Apple switched to Nvidia, or even commit to saying that Nvidia's graphics are better than what comparable ATI chips can offer. "Nvidia is a great choice, and delivers the quality graphics our customers expect," he said. He also declined to confirm whether the iMac would soon shift to Nvidia as well.

Apple touted the new models' performance, claiming that the latest systems run high-end applications such as Final Cut Pro 6 50% faster, and PhotoShop 39% faster, than the original Core Duo MacBook Pros unveiled in February 2006. And the combination of the LED backlighting and lower power consumption of the Santa Rosa chipset, said Moody, should result in an extra 30 to 60 minutes of battery time.