New MacBook Pro’s – Last Longer and Have Better Graphics but will Gamers Care?

Apple has done some Spring cleaning of its MacBook Pro line and has slipped in some new processors as well as managing to increase battery life.

The 15 inch MacBook Pro now has the choice of 2.4GHz or 2.53GHz Intel Core i5 processors which will tap you for £1,500 or £1,650 respectively. The 2.66GHz Core i7 chip model requires 1,800 of your British pouds.

The 17 incher offers a 2.53GHz Core i5 chip, for £1,900.

Both sizes now come complete with Nvidia GeForce GT 330M graphics with 256MB or 512MB of RAM.

The 13 inch model has added an Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics processor, alongside the existing 2.4GHz or 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo chips. It starts at £1,000 for 250GB of memory, or £1,250 for 320GB.

Apparently all this means that programs that are graphics heavy, such as the top games or Aperture will run at around 80% faster than before.

To stop you having to visit a plug every other hour some new automatic graphics-switching technology will turn the hungry graphics chip off when it’s not needed. Also, If you’re out and about and need to squeeze every last drop of juice out of the battery you can tell your Mac to make do with the integrated Intel graphics processor and ignore the Nvidia power leech. This means that the 13 inch Pro has increased its battery life to ten hours.

Trackpads now are loving inertial scrolling – basically, when you to flick the pad the page you’re on will scroll just like the iPhone.

Take two cables to your HD TV? Not any more! The mini DisplayPort now also supports audio output which means that you can plug your new MacBook Pro into a high-definition television with just the one HDMI adaptor.

I’m still not convinced that these tweaks will bring the gamers over – even though Steam now loves the Apple 😉

Or – am I wrong?

Let me know either way 🙂