The notebooks, which were released about a week earlier than many pundits had predicted, are Apple’s first with LED-backlit screens, which is another step toward completely eliminating mercury from Apple’s screens, said company SVP Phillip Schiller, in a statement.
As usual, there are three new MacBook Pros: two 15.4-inch machines that cost $1,999 and $2,499; and a 17-inch model that costs $2,799. The cheaper 15-inch version now has a 120GB hard drive and 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors, which is an upgrade from its previous 2.16GHz CPU; while the higher-end 15-inch model and the 17-inch version now have 2.4GHz Core 2 Duos, up from 2.33GHz, and 160GB hard drives.
All three have 802.11n WiFi, which is yet to be ratified as a wireless standard but promises as much as five times the performance and twice the range of earlier WiFi flavors, including 802.11b/g.
The trio of notebooks can be upgraded from 2GB to 4GB of random access memory for an extra cost. They all come with Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.0, FireWire and a DVI video output.
The previous major upgrade to MacBook Pros was in October.
Apple also announced its combination smartphone-media player device, the iPhone, would hit retail shelves on June 29.
