Jake Widman
Wednesday, 21 October 2009 01:49
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Apple has also tweaked the entry-level MacBook, bumping the processor speed from 2.13 to 2.26 GHz and putting a 250GB hard drive in the base model, up from 160GB (320 and 500GB drives available). The price remains the same: US$999, AU$1,299.
What's taken out? Firewire.
Apple dropped FireWire from the 13-inch aluminum MacBook released a year ago, and the decision was not well received by the Mac community.
Since then, the company added a 13-inch aluminum model to the MacBook Pro line, restoring FireWire to that form factor; but it's now dropped it from the white plastic MacBook.
That seems like a reasonable decision for an entry-level notebook, but it means that anyone who wants FireWire to support a legacy video camera or for the ability to mount one Mac as an external drive for another (in Target Mode) will have to spend an extra US$200 or AU$300 for a 13-inch MacBook Pro -- plus another US$50 or AU$70 if they want the 250GB hard disk.
The Mac minis got a boost, too. They now come in either a 2.26GHz/2 GB memory/160GB hard drive version for US$599, AU$849; or a 2.53GHz/4 GB/320GB version for US$799, AU$1,099.
That represents double the memory and a faster chip for the same price. But most intriguing is a new product altogether: the higher-end Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server preinstalled.
At US$999, AU$1,399, the server model comes with two 500GB hard drives (but no optical drive) for a full 1 TB of storage. This is clever packaging on Apple's part and should be an attractive server solution for lots of small businesses.
For more on the Magic Mouse, see Page 3.
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