New Apple Laptops

Tomorrow Apple hosts one of its 3X yearly product announcements, and for this one its all laptop, top to bottom.

Check back here at the official AppleSwitcher forums thread for minute-by-minute analysis on the announcements. Here’s the rumor summary:

MacBook

aluminum cases, no Firewire, still integrated graphics (but better), large trackpad, DriveCache: uses Flash storage to speed up boot times

MacBook Pro

still aluminum, MacBooks style chiclet keyboard, latchless lid like MacBook, easy RAM and drive access (THANK YOU), large trackpad

From MacRumors:

- The optical drive appears to be on the right side (when facing the laptop)
- All the ports are on the left side (when facing the laptop)
- Case does not appear to be tapered like the MacBook Air
- Power button is in the far top right corner
- Large trackpad like the MacBook Air
- Appears to be “latchless”
- No Firewire port on MacBook?

From Wired:

Both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro will be aluminum. The aluminum MacBook has been rumored since forever, and if we take the leaked shots as real, Apple is finally going all-metal in its Mac lineup.

We can also be pretty certain that the MacBook Pro will gain the chiclet-style keyboard of the Air and the stock MacBook, most likely in backlit black. Ditto the magnetic latch which holds the MacBook Pro closed that little button is so 2001. The other advantage the current MacBook has over the MBP is the easy-to-swap hard drive. Along with the RAM, the HDD is a simple five-minute slot-in replacement. Expect to see this in the Pro.

Internally we can expect some more changes. Mac Cultist Leander Kahney hopes for 4GB RAM as standard in the MBP, and two in the MacBook. He also lists integrated NVIDIA graphics in the MacBook, something that rumor site Apple Insider corroborates, claiming to have confirmed the inclusion of NVIDIAs MCP79. While this still shares the system memory, it is apparently faster and probably more important for Apple smaller than the Intel GMA950 which is currently used.

I didn’t know Rush Limbaugh is a Mac user, until I found myself at a page on his site where he’s complaining about Mac OS X 10.5 bugs [link thanks to Keef]. Fair enough, we all complain. But then something caught my eye:

So I’m asking these guys during the break, “Do you think I ought to put out a plea to Steve Jobs? I know he’s politically opposite of me, but just to say, “Mr. Jobs, please, I just ordered six brand-new Mac Pros: four for me and two as gifts; maxed out, Blu-ray drives. I’ve loaded ‘em up. Our whole office here is Mac, and I just want it to work because I love them — and these two things that aren’t working would seem to me, as a novice, to be a simple fix, but they’re not.”

[my bold]

I’m usually pretty up-to-date on Mac configurations, and sure enough, when I went to the Apple Store to check on the nagging possibility that Blu-ray drives had been introduced for Macs without my knowledge, there’s no Blu-ray drive options on Mac Pros, or any Macs for that matter.

So either Rush is full of (yet more) hot air, or there’s a Mac pilot program for celebrities, and he’s in it.

MacRumors notes a new id string for the next MacBook Pro has started to leak out of Cupertino. It’s been many months (June 2007) since the MBPs were updated, so this signals what many anticipated happening soon anyway.

Questions: will it have a fancy new touchpad ala MacBook Air? Will it have greater screen resolution than current models?

Mac Rumors says we may see an updated MacBook tomorrow.

Apple’s Leopard update, however, has revealed drivers for the newer Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics chip. This is the successor to the Intel GMA 950 which currently resides in the existing MacBooks. This would suggest that the next MacBook will see an upgrade to the Santa Rosa chipset. This, however, remains speculative. The driver, however, appears functional and works when used on a PC laptop with the X3100 chipset.