New MacBooks!

October15

Early this morning, New Zealand time, Steve Jobs took the stage in a special Apple event where he announced a bunch of notebooks. I got up at 6am to read the up to date news on these new systems. As I said during the last event about the new iPods, I find myself less excited and feeling a little disappointed after the announcement. I feel this is not because the products suck or are just minor updates, but because rumors about these are getting released months, weeks, days and hours before the event, and they turn out to be true. I would enjoy the keynote a lot more if the releases were a complete surprise, something i hadn’t seen before, but that seems to be impossible nowadays, unfortunately.

If you want to know about the new MacBooks, you can go to Engadget, MacRumors, Ars Technica or any other tech site that reports on Apple news. If you want the specs and more detailed information, you can go to the Apple website or store for that. They both looks pretty cool and they both are pretty expensive, which is a shame. I had plans on getting a MacBook before, and I still would like a MacBook now. They also announced a 24 inch Cinema Display. The thing that makes this product so special is that it was made for MacBook, Pro and Air. It has 3 cables on it, MagSafe for power, USB for data and Mini DisplayLink for graphics. I think this is a great solution for connecting your notebook to a monitor. It is similar to some kind of docking solution, except with cables. The monitor has power USB ports for those desk items like keyboard, mouse, external drives etc.

The new MacBook is made out of Aluminium instead of plastic. The case looks really nice, much nicer than the previous one in my opinion. The screen is glass and features a LED backlit monitor. It would have been nice if it was capable of 1440×900 instead of just 1280×800. It also has a backlit keyboard on the high end model which is something that I would love because I do type in the dark and have difficulty seeing the in that setting. They have also ditched the Intel integrated graphics with a nVidia GeForce 9400M which is a much better graphics option. I also noticed that it uses DDR3 RAM instead of the DDR2 that most other notebook computers use.

I do love the new MacBook over the old one. The only problem is the increase in price point. The old custom configuration I had would have cost me $2500 with AppleCare and an Educational Discount. My new custom configuration is going to cost me $3000 with AppleCare and Educational Discount. I’m starting to wonder if a $3000 notebook computer is a smart thing to do. Should I just give it a skip and go with a cheaper Windows PC? I really want this MacBook but I’m not sure if I could do it for $3000. Only time will tell if and when I own this beauty…