Apple Upgrades MacBook Speed and Battery Life
For the same price of $999 Apple today quietly boosted up the processor speed and placed a longer-life battery in its entry-level MacBook laptop.
Apple increased the MacBook's Intel Core 2 Duo processor speed to 2.4GHz from 2.2GHz, and placed a 10-hour battery to match the higher-priced MacBook Pro line. The battery is still within the case, and cannot be swapped out by the user.
The MacBook now has Nvidia's GeForce 320M integrated graphics, the specially-made-for-Apple successor to the GeForce 9400M, the MacBook's former chipset. The GeForce 320M also gives power to the two lowest-priced 13-inch MacBook Pro laptops, selling for $1,199 and $1,499.
What remains in the MacBook are the amount of memory (2GB), hard disk storage space (250GB) and the white polycarbonate case. This is not a total surprise. A Vietnamese forum published a series of shots that showed an unboxing of the new MacBook, accurately reporting that the new notebook would include a 2.4GHz processor and the GeForce 320M graphics.
The last Apple update of the MacBook took place in October, when the Intel processor went up from 2.13GHz to 2.2GHz. The MacBook battery life also grew longer last year, to about seven hours. The upgraded MacBook is now being sold in Apple's retail stores and online.