Apple has updated it MacBook line of portable computers today just in time for the holiday buying season. There are a few major changes with this upgrade that is a welcome plus for people looking to get the most out of the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard update.
The new MacBook upgrade includes the Santa Rosa platform which should not be confused with the name of the chipset. The name Santa Rosa comes from Intel’s branding for the platform and is like their other Centrino brand.
The MacBook processor comes in two flavors, a Core 2 Duo 2.0 or 2.2 GHz. Both versions include an upgraded 800 MHz front side bus. This speeds up the data transferred between all of the chips, ram and hard drive of a computer. The biggest upgrade in this version is the long overdue removal of the GMA 950 graphics shared memory processor. The new MacBook has the updated GMA X3100 shared memory graphics processor. It now uses up to 144 MB of shared memory rather than 64 MB of what the old GMA 950 used. The reason why this is the biggest update for the new MacBook’s is that users can now run larger graphics programs faster and Windows Vista will work a lot better with Boot Camp.
Now that the new graphics processor uses more ram for video memory, the MacBook has been upgraded to have the capacity of 4 GB of RAM. The previous MacBook could only hold up to 2 GB of RAM.
The prices are the same as for previous MacBook’s. The most upgraded stock MacBook for $1,499 has a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB of RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, and an 8X SuperDrive. The previous MacBook at this price had a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo, 1 GB of RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, and 8x SuperDrive.
Estimated shipping time on the stock models of the MacBook’s from Apple are 24 hours. Via Tuaw.