The new Apple MacBook Pro range is official, and it’s quite the star line-up. The entire 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch spread has been updated, with Intel’s Sandy Bridge 2011 Core processors across the board. Apple has also cast out NVIDIA, replacing GeForce GPUs with AMD’s Radeon graphics on the 15- and 17-inch machines. The 13-inch, meanwhile, makes do with Intel’s integrated graphics alone. Perhaps most interesting is the addition of Apple’s new Thunderbolt connector, based on Intel’s Light Peak technology and promising up to 10Gbps data transfer speeds. Full details after the cut.
Two new 13.3-inch MacBook Pro units are on offer, each using Intel’s Core i5 and i7 running at either 2.3GHz or 2.7GHz. The entry-level model offers 4GB of DDR3 memory as standard along with a 320GB hard-drive and Intel HD Graphics 3000. Alternatively, the second version has the same 4GB of memory and same graphics, but upgrades to a 500GB hard-drive.
As for the 15.4-inch midrange MacBook Pro, that now has a choice of Intel’s quad-core 2.0GHz, 2.2GHz or 2.3GHz Core i7 processors. There’s 4GB of DDR3 memory as standard, with the entry-level machine packing a 500GB hard-drive and the second a 750GB drive. Both offer Intel HD Graphics 3000 and a discrete AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1GB GPU, with OS X intelligently switching between them depending on how demanding your current video workload is. Both come as standard with glossy-finish displays running at 1440 x 900, but matte-finish will be an option.
Finally, a single 17-inch MacBook Pro SKU has been revealed, running Intel’s quad-core 2.2GHz Core i7 processor and the same double graphics options: Intel HD 3000 and AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1GB with automatic switching. As before, the glossy display runs at 1920 x 1200 as standard, but can be specified with a matte finish, while storage is 750GB as standard and up to 512GB of SSD as an option.
All of the new models have an SDXC memory card slot (aside from the 17-inch, which has an ExpressCard slot), WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet and a FireWire 800 port. There’s also a slot-loading 8x SuperDrive DVD-burner – Apple still refuses to consider Blu-ray – and a webcam, now renamed from iSight to FaceTime-HD. The Mini DisplayPort from previous iterations has been replaced by a new Apple Thunderbolt port on the updated MacBook Pro range, which offers backward compatibility with the DisplayPort connector via a bundled dongle, but also high-speed data transfers.
Thunderbolt consists of two bi-directional channels offering transfer speeds up to 10Gbps each, hooking up PCI Express directly to external peripherals such as RAID arrays. It can support FireWire and USB devices along with gigabit ethernet via adapters. Thunderbolt also supports DisplayPort for high resolution displays and works with existing adapters for HDMI, DVI and VGA displays.
