Reflecting the strength of the Aussie dollar, Apple Australia has cut more than $1000 from the price of some of its top-end MacBook Pro portables, while also souping them up with faster chips, better Nvidia graphics and extended battery life.
Apple’s flagship notebook, the 17-inch MacBook Pro cost $3999 when launched in June last year with a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor. Now sporting a significantly more powerful 2.5GHz Core i5 chip, it goes for $2899, a cut of $1100.
The top 15-inch model, which sold for $3699 last June, now goes for $2798, and has a Core i7 Nehalem processor in place of the old model’s 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo.
Two 13-inch MacBook Pros retain Core 2 Duos, running at slightly higher clock speeds. But the base model goes for $1499 against its predecessor’s $1899 tag. Both have 4GB of RAM and batteries that Apple claims are good for 10 hours (the 15- and 17-inch models have 8-9 hour batteries).
The 15- and 17-inchers also have not one but two graphics processors: a Nvidia GeForce GT 330M for peak performance, especially in game playing, and Intel HD graphics for energy-efficient operation in less exacting applications. Apple’s automatic graphics switching is said to determine which processor an app needs.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro will run for 10 hours on a single charge, according to Apple. The larger models will run for between eight and nine hours
