Apple’s new line of MacBooks and MacBook Pros will feature video cards from one of the video industry’s leaders, NVIDIA, replacing the Intel-based video chipsets that have long been at the center of Apple’s display experience.
Steve Jobs, announcing the joint work with NVIDIA, said that the jointly designed GeForce 9400M was custom built for Apple and combines the chipset and the GPU on one die, with 16 parallel processing cores. He showed a graph showing performance boosts of around 200% to 500% on popular games such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty.
One of the most expected announcements in today’s event was the pricing for Apple’s new range of machines. However, the price drop is only $100 for the entry-level MacBook, which brings its price down to $999.
Jobs also talked about their new multitouch glass trackpad for the notebooks, that supports four different types of gestures to interact with the computer and is larger than previous trackpads.
Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, talked about the new encasing using aluminum and plastic gaskets for the MacBook Air. Rumors had abounded over the last few weeks about “The Brick,” referring to Apple’s new laptop that would have aluminum casing. However, Ive demonstrated how the new MacBook Airs, while using aluminum, would still weigh only 2.5 pounds.
Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said that Apple sold 2.5 million Macs in the last quarter, a “new record for the company”. He also said that the Macs have been “growing 2-3 times the market growth,” citing “better computers, far superior” technologies and products such as the iMac and MacBook Air as the main reason for such rapid growth. Cook also cited software, compatibility with Windows, marketing and retail stores as reasons for the growth.
Cook said that Macs now account for 17.6 percent of unit sales in retail, and has surpassed Dell in the education market for laptops.
One reason that Cook also gave, that set the audience laughing was “something we didn’t do—Vista.” Cook said, “Vista hasn’t lived up to everything Microsoft hoped it would” and he added that Apple had benefited from it.
Steve Jobs, announcing the joint work with NVIDIA, said that the jointly designed GeForce 9400M was custom built for Apple and combines the chipset and the GPU on one die, with 16 parallel processing cores. He showed a graph showing performance boosts of around 200% to 500% on popular games such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty.
One of the most expected announcements in today’s event was the pricing for Apple’s new range of machines. However, the price drop is only $100 for the entry-level MacBook, which brings its price down to $999.
Jobs also talked about their new multitouch glass trackpad for the notebooks, that supports four different types of gestures to interact with the computer and is larger than previous trackpads.
Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, talked about the new encasing using aluminum and plastic gaskets for the MacBook Air. Rumors had abounded over the last few weeks about “The Brick,” referring to Apple’s new laptop that would have aluminum casing. However, Ive demonstrated how the new MacBook Airs, while using aluminum, would still weigh only 2.5 pounds.
Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said that Apple sold 2.5 million Macs in the last quarter, a “new record for the company”. He also said that the Macs have been “growing 2-3 times the market growth,” citing “better computers, far superior” technologies and products such as the iMac and MacBook Air as the main reason for such rapid growth. Cook also cited software, compatibility with Windows, marketing and retail stores as reasons for the growth.
Cook said that Macs now account for 17.6 percent of unit sales in retail, and has surpassed Dell in the education market for laptops.
One reason that Cook also gave, that set the audience laughing was “something we didn’t do—Vista.” Cook said, “Vista hasn’t lived up to everything Microsoft hoped it would” and he added that Apple had benefited from it.
