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Apple indulges in MacBook Pro refresh

by Navin Maini on 24 October 2011, 14:59

Tags: Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)

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Apple has quietly refreshed its MacBook Pro line-up today, retaining existing price-points, whilst tweaking specs.

 

 

The £999 13in model, now ships with a 2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 CPU, and a 500GB 5,400RPM hard drive. Next up in the 13in family, is the £1299 offering that now comes with a 2.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 CPU, together with a 750GB 5400RPM hard drive. Both retain their 4GB DDR3-1333MHz RAM and Intel HD Graphics 3000.

Moving into 15in domain, the £1549 flavour is now kitted-out with a 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU and AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics with 512MB GDDR5 memory, to complement its 500GB HDD and 4GB DDR3-1,333MHz RAM. Moving to the £1849 SKU, will get you a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU, AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics with 1GB GDDR5 memory, and a 750GB HDD.

Last up, is the £2099 17in model which is also fuelled by a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU. It's also accompanied by a 750GB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics with 1GB GDDR5 memory and 4GHz DDR3-1,333MHz RAM.



HEXUS Forums :: 9 Comments

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Yup, that's still an awful lot of money for what you get. And this one I'm typing on now crashes a lot more than it should, but hey ho if work want to waste money on Apple, who am I to stop them?
Very kind of you not to stop me picking a MBP up next month. Thanks!
Bluecube
Very kind of you not to stop me picking a MBP up next month. Thanks!

Hope yours is more stable…

Oh, and also make sure you change all your hardware to Apple equivalent in the house, especially the router - the wifi card in these things is really truly flakey unless it's connected to an ApplePort or whatever they call their overpriced version. It can be stable for days, quite happy, on Netgear, D-Link and Linksys hardware, then suddenly decide to drop connection, and there's no rhyme nor reason to it. Oh, and the screen appears to have gone all light in the bottom corners (this MBP is 6 months old).
Also, when the battery goes like my last one, you can't just swap it out (like the last model of MBP I had through work), due to the (admittedly smart) unibody design, so that'll cost a fair whack to get a simple replacement dropped in. Same goes for the hard disk, though this SS 250GB should be okay for a while, I hope, no reported problems in that area, unlike the wireless card and the screen and the battery…

These are just some of the reasons I won't be spending any of my own money on Apple hardware. In my experience, it doesn't ‘just work’, it needs a lot of fighting to make it work and even then it only half works.
Only my experience, mind, they surely have a lot of perfectly rational, devoted, loyal customers (guffaw!). :)
Personally, I'm very happy with my XPS 15, equipped with i7 2820QM, 8GB DDR3, 2GB GT 540M, 640GB HDD (now swapped out for 256GB SSD), and of course a 1920x1080p screen with excellent speakers & good build quality, plus the usual other specs.. for £783.05 inc VAT & delivery, new from the Dell Outlet. With a year's warranty.

But sure, Apple's rough equivalent @ over £2,000 sounds good. Oh wait, you can't get the equivalent, they don't offer a 1080p 15" screen. Ah well, maybe next time.
miniyazz
Personally, I'm very happy with my XPS 15, equipped with i7 2820QM, 8GB DDR3, 2GB GT 540M, 640GB HDD (now swapped out for 256GB SSD), and of course a 1920x1080p screen with excellent speakers & good build quality, plus the usual other specs.. for £783.05 inc VAT & delivery, new from the Dell Outlet. With a year's warranty.

But sure, Apple's rough equivalent @ over £2,000 sounds good. Oh wait, you can't get the equivalent, they don't offer a 1080p 15" screen. Ah well, maybe next time.

Long ago I decided that people who buy Apple PCs/Laptops do so because of the aesthetics. My older cousin who was 19 at the time didn't know much about computers, didn't know the difference between Windows and OSX but decided she needed a computer and it had to be an iMac G3:



She tried really hard to work with it and then ended up having to buy a PC because she hated the OS. :)