The New MacBook - Apple Oct 2008 Event

At the recent Apple Oct 2008 event...

State of the Mac

Sold 2.5 millions mac (last quarter)

How they did that ?

1. Better computers
   
2. Better software
   
3. Compatibility (Enables Windows to run natively on the Mac)
   
4. Vista (Hasn't lived up)
   
5. Marketing
   
6. Retail Stores (247 stores in 8 country) - 400k visitors each, 50% new conversion.

• Outgrown the market in 4 years.
  
• Revenues share 30% (1 out 3 dollar is spent on Mac)
  
• Top supplier of notebooks for Education sector 39% (47% for major universities)
  
• The real momentum is 71 M in 2007, q1-q3 (2008) 71 M.

New Ways to Build Notebooks

The challenges of building thin and light notebook is to make the structure strong and robust.

The old MacBook was made from assembling small units of structures.









The revolutionary Macbook Air reinvents the wheel by doing the opposite - started from a solid board, removing away unwanted parts to cater for the features and it results as 'unibody enclosure'.










New Graphics for Notebooks

Combine the chipset and embedded graphic processor all in one part - Nvidia GForce 9400M.

• Chipset + GPU
  
• 70% of die area is GPU
  
• 16 parallel graphics cores
  
• 54 Gigaflops
  
• Up to 5 times faster than Intel integrated graphic

New Trackpad

• 39% larger
  
• Multi touch for gestures
  
• Glass
  
• Entire trackpad is the button

Conclusion of the new MacBook Pro:

• Unibody Enclosure
  
• LED backlit display
  
• Next generation graphics
  
• Multi-touch glass trackpad
  
• Mini Display Port connector
  
• Backlit keyboard
  
• Built-in iSight and microphone
  
• Stereo speakers
  
• Magnetic latch.
  
• Environmental friendly.
  
  
  • Arsenic free
  • BFR free
  • Mercury free
  • PVC free
  • Highly recyclable material
  • 37% shrinkage of the packages

What I like about it is the removable hard disk (solid state drive) known as 'slot-loading super drive' feature.

Still expensive for Ringgit Malaysian conversion and thus Apple computer is still a luxury thing in Malaysia. I still think that my next upgrade of Notebook will be Lenovo Thinkpad T61. I would love to have a tablet PC but the screen is usually just 12 inch (too small).