New MacBook Coming Soon?
"The rest of us" have been waiting for a MacBook update for quite a while now, especially since the Santa Rosa launch earlier this year and the subsequent update to the MacBook Pro.
In fact many students have posted comments on various message boards around the web that would seem to indicate that they feel that Apple let their market segment down by failing to release a new MacBook before the school year started. After all, it is hard to justify the purchase of a MacBook Pro if the budget is tight and you're planning on studying virtually anything that isn't multimedia design intensive.
It appears that the wait is almost over, and a refreshed MacBook launch in early to mid November seems very likely. What doesn't seem likely is a price increase, or sadly an option for discrete graphics.
“The MacBook update is expected to be largely incremental, although recent indications suggest it may in fact adopt the faster 64-bit Santa Rosa platform that is featured on the MacBook Pro. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard includes drivers for Intel's GMA X3100 graphics chip, the successor to the GMA 950 that has been used in every MacBook model to date. The X3100 chipset is only found on Satan Rosa platforms.”
We have to admit that we're interested to see how the GMA X3100 performs under OS 10.5, and are especially interested to see if it can handle all of Leopard's eye-candy.
Still, we can't help but be at least a tiny bit disappointed that we haven't heard any solid rumors about a discrete graphics chip, even something similar to the GeForce Go 7300 graphics chip found on the sub-$300 Apple TV.
In fact many students have posted comments on various message boards around the web that would seem to indicate that they feel that Apple let their market segment down by failing to release a new MacBook before the school year started. After all, it is hard to justify the purchase of a MacBook Pro if the budget is tight and you're planning on studying virtually anything that isn't multimedia design intensive.
It appears that the wait is almost over, and a refreshed MacBook launch in early to mid November seems very likely. What doesn't seem likely is a price increase, or sadly an option for discrete graphics.
“The MacBook update is expected to be largely incremental, although recent indications suggest it may in fact adopt the faster 64-bit Santa Rosa platform that is featured on the MacBook Pro. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard includes drivers for Intel's GMA X3100 graphics chip, the successor to the GMA 950 that has been used in every MacBook model to date. The X3100 chipset is only found on Satan Rosa platforms.”
We have to admit that we're interested to see how the GMA X3100 performs under OS 10.5, and are especially interested to see if it can handle all of Leopard's eye-candy.
Still, we can't help but be at least a tiny bit disappointed that we haven't heard any solid rumors about a discrete graphics chip, even something similar to the GeForce Go 7300 graphics chip found on the sub-$300 Apple TV.
