Apple released their new MacBooks and MacBook Pros early this morning Australian time. The much rumoured and now much touted feature of the new notebooks is that the housing is honed from a solid piece of aluminium. The two previous links will take you to Apple.com where you can look over the specifications in detail. What follows are a number of points I felt were significant.

Apple were the final manufacturer I know of to offer the CD-burning and DVD-reading optical drive. In Apple's defence, its long overdue death was probably due to the fact that it was slot-loading. Even the bottom-of-the-range white MacBook now has a DVD-burner. Thank goodness!

Apple, who are meant to be leaders in industrial design, have only just now replaced a design that was nearly six years old. That is except for the 17-inch model. The design for that model will probably see its sixth birthday, hopefully being replaced at MacWorld Expo in January 2009.

Intel has confirmed that the CPUs used in the MacBook Air have been updated to Penryn chips. This is not terribly suprising since Intel announced Penryn chips before the original MacBook Air was released. That older model was expected to be constructed using the newer chips, and it was a source of criticism when Memrom CPUs were used instead. The inclusion of Penryn is significant as the smaller 45 nm process used in the construction of the CPU should equate to a small gain in battery life and lower heat output.

The 1920 by 1200 LED display which was an upgrade on the previous 17-inch model is now standard. The displays on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are LED backlit as well. If you haven't used an LED backlit display you're probably wondering why the upgrade is significant. Compared to fluorescent backlighting the colour is much improved, there is no warm-up time, and there is no loss in brightness with age. Only the older style white MacBook retains its florescent backlight.

Apple says that both the new MacBook and MacBook Pro have "edge-to-edge" glass displays. These are similar in design to the iMacs and the new 24" LED Cinema Display. Annoyingly the only model to now offer a matte display is the 17-inch MacBook Pro.

The entire trackpad acts as the mouse button. Observers have said that the resistance of the trackpad is perfect, clicking when you meant to click, and only dragging when you meant to drag. I only hope that with the passing of time the resistance remains perfect.

The trackpad is now even larger! This is to allow for multi-finger gestures, of which there are now four-fingered gestures to control Exposé. In my opinion the oversized trackpad increases strain on the hands by reducing the amount of area available that can act as a palm-rest. I find that a couple of my fingers like to rest along the outside of the trackpad as my index finger is doing the shuffling. This results in me only using the top righthand corner of a large Mac trackpad. I long for the return of Mac OS 9 mouse-tracking and the tiny "Wallstreet" style trackpad.

Whilst the MacBook Air style of keyboard, with its ever so slight concave alphanumeric keys, is an improvement over the original MacBook "flat" key design, it's still not nearly as nice to type on as the older MacBook Pro style of keyboard. One of the first things people would comment on after using my 12" PowerBook was how nice the keyboard was. It seems that the Apple had reached the pinnacle of laptop keyboard design in January of 2003, and now the only way to go is down.

Whilst it's not immediately obvious within the AppleStore, the new keyboards are in fact backlit. Apple isn't making as big a deal about this as they have in the past. In reading it's easy to miss that the keyboard on the new 2.0 GHz MacBook is not backlit.

All Mac laptops, except for the older style white MacBook, are now dual-link capable. The new video-out port on the new models, as well as the revised MacBook Air, is the "Mini DisplayPort". Apple assures us that this is a new "industry standard" port, however I doubt we'll see it on any other computer. Thanks to the onboard nVidia GPU these new machines are dual-link capable, allowing them to drive the 30" Apple Cinema Display.

Thanks to the move to nVidia chipsets the 15" MacBook Pros have not only the onboard 9400M GPU but the discrete 9600M GT GPU as well. Apple says that the MacBook Pros can switch between them, presumably using nVidia's HybridPower, conserving battery life. There has been much speculation that Hybrid SLI will be supported in Snow Leopard.

This is a worrying trend possibly indicating that Apple are returning to the Apple of old. Not only is the IR remote not included, but now the monitor dongles are no longer included as well. In their defence there are now more models of dongles available, due to the move to the Mini DisplayPort and the inclusion of dual-link support, but still...

Getting to the hard drive in the 2003 style of PowerBooks and MacBook Pros wasn't exactly trivial. Now it's easier than ever thanks to a removable door on the bottom of the laptops. A simple pull of a lever removes the access door and reveals the battery, hard drive and presumably RAM slots. The Kensington lock slot also prevents removal of the access panel.

Also, after a once complete disappearance from the AppleStore, many different 7200 rpm drives are available as upgrade options. There is also a 128 GB flash-based hard drive available for all new models.

To complement the 1066 MHz FSB of the CPUs is the inclusion of DDR3-1066. This is a good move on Apple's part. Surprisingly for a manufacturer who readily adopts newer technologies they were stuck at DDR2-667 for far too long. I have been expecting a jump in DDR2 speed for quite some time. The move to DDR3 is welcomed, especially in portables where the lower voltage of DDR3 may increase battery life.

The battery indicator is animated, letting you know of events like a successful battery change. The sleep indicator appears to shine through the aluminium, thanks to the thinning and microscopic laser drilling of the aluminium in front of the white LED. It's touches like these that I really appreciate on an Apple product.

No. But I'm rather finicky about my tech. In anticipation of glossy screens and spaced-out-nearly-flat keys, I recently purchased a 15-inch MacBook Pro. I really hate glossy screens and what appears now to be the standard design of Apple keyboard, so much so that I waited until I was sure that the "Early 2008" 15-inch model was to be the last to have the excellent keyboard and matte LED display.

Updated Oct 16 09:30 Added information about the four-finger gestures and MacBook Air CPU.

Dictionary.app on Mac OS X is apparently a replica of The New Oxford America Dictionary. If that's true The New Oxford America Dictionary is fast becoming my favourite dictionary. I'm surprised to find that dictionary writers have a sense of humour. If you have access to Mac OS X check out the definitions for the following words.

democracy: a democracy in Iraq is quite unlikely for now or any time soon (thesaurus)

dude: if some dude smacked me, I'd smack him back (dictionary)

observe: I observed this wheelchair dude in the vestibule waiting for me (thesaurus)

These turned up on Digg some time ago. Please contact me if you've spotted something that I should add to this list.

This is an interesting meme handed down amongst deep sea researchers—the lowering of a polystyrene cup into deep water. The increase in pressure "shrinks" the cup down to a miniature of its former self. Cups are decorated and kept as mementos of the voyage.

The first link leads to a time-lapse video of a single cup as it is lowered into the sea. The other links are to pictures of decorated cups.

I upgraded my RAM today and became a member of the ever growing "5.9 Club". I know this doesn't mean much nowadays, but it still feels good to see it on screen. I wonder when Microsoft are going to raise the maximum past 5.9.