Phil Schiller kicked off today’s keynote with a light update to the MacBook Pro family. All the models now include the new lithium polymer battery introduced with the 17 inch MacBook Pro earlier this year. They also have an SD-card slot in exchange for the Expresscard slot, a weird move by Apple. The Expresscard slot remains only on the 17-inch MacBook Pro. And lastly, the 13-inch MacBooks now have a Firewire 800 slot, officially making them part of the MacBook Pro family.
So the MacBook Pro 13-inch starts at $1,199, which includes the backlit keyboard, starting with a 2.26Ghz processor. The MacBook Pro 15-inch starts at $1699, starts at 2.53Ghz, but doesn’t include the 9600GT graphics that are available in the higher end models. You can go up to 3.06Ghz CPU, 500GB hard drive, and 8GB of memory with the 15-inch MacBook Pro. The 17-inch model stays the same, but it gets a price cut down to $2499.
The MacBook Air also underwent some performance upgrades, with the base model at 1.8Ghz and 120GB hard drive priced at $1499, and the higher end 2.16Ghz model with a 128GB SSD priced at $1799.
And lastly, the lower end solitary white MacBook underwent some performance upgrades with a 2.13Ghz processor, 160GB hard drive, priced at $999. [Ed: Or are the specs the same as before? I’m not very sure.]
All this awesomeness is shipping today [Ed: In the US, at least].
