Apple unveiled new MacBook Pros on Thursday. The new models include faster processors and graphics, a new FaceTime HD camera, and a new peripheral connection port called Thunderbolt.
The company said the updated MacBook Pro product line has the latest dual-core and quad-core Intel processors and is as much as twice as fast as the previous lineup. There’s also a glass Multi-Touch trackpad, an LED-backlit display in widescreen format, an illuminated keyboard, and a seven-hour battery.
‘Revolutionary New I/O’
Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said Thunderbolt is “a revolutionary new I/O technology that delivers an amazing 10 gigabits per second and can support every important I/O standard.”
Thunderbolt was developed by Intel in collaboration with Apple. It offers two bidirectional channels with speeds up to 10 Gbps each, and it supports PCI Express for peripherals like RAID arrays. With adapters, it also supports gigabit Ethernet networks, and FireWire and USB devices.
The new 13-inch model offers Intel Core i5 and Core i7 dual-core processors running as fast as 2.7 GHz, and Intel HD Graphics 3000. The 15- and 17-inch models feature quad-core Core i7 processors up to 2.3 GHz, with AMD Radeon HD graphics processors and up to 1GB of video memory for high-end gaming, video editing, and apps that require heavy graphics processing.
Thunderbolt is based on Intel’s Light Peak technology. Although copper-based in the new MacBook Pros, an upcoming version of the technology is expected to be fiber optic and support a blazing 100 gigabits per second.
Columnist and consultant Robert X. Cringely has predicted that this technology, coupled with automatic load distribution through Mac OS X’s Grand Central Dispatch, and finely tuned multi-processing control from Mac OS X’s Xgrid, could mean a “supercomputer” could be built by daisy-chaining multiple Macs together. In particular, he envisions Mac Minis…