Apple Introduces New MacBook Pro

What’s better than one mouse button? No mouse buttons! Apple’s notorious refusal to add a “right-click” button to their mice has taken a turn in the opposite direction. The new MacBook Pro will, among other things, have a button-less glass trackpad complete with gestures galore.

Major Upgrades

New Construction

The new unibody enclosures are actually carved out of a single aluminum block. Apparently this is what they had been doing with the MacBook Air’s and now they’re porting over the the technology. The new construction should be more rigid and durable, which is never a bad thing. Overall this reduces the total number of parts and thus the less things that can break.

Ultrathin Glass Display

You’d better like glossy, because you no longer have the option to go matte. I’m not exactly pumped about this. The logic is that you can adjust brightness to eliminate glare, but I’d just rather have no glare (or fingerprints). The display is LED-backlit and also claims a stronger and more durable construction. The display is also arsenic-free to follow the path to greeness.

New Graphics Card

NVIDIA is delivering the GeForce 9600M GT, which boosts performance by 2.3x. The cool thing about the new setup is the ability to switch between an integrated processor and the newer GT processor. Obviously the latter eats your battery a bit quicker.

Glass Multi-Touch Trackpad

Gestures. Gestures. Gestures. And who needs buttons? The new trackpad has up to four fingered gestures and the ability to use software enabled right-clicking. The lack of a physical button means 39% more room to caress your lappys new glass. Might be cool, but I’d need to try it.

All in all, these look like some decent improvments. I’m still waiting for a tablet. HP has been airing comercials with iMac like display that is all touch screen. I’m actually surprised they beat Apple to market on that one. Oh well. Competition is good. Now Apple has to answer.