On the heels of the hugely hyped release of the Apple iPhone 4S, it's hard to imagine Apple releasing anything on the QT. (And by that, we don't mean "QuickTime.") So imagine our surprise to learn that Apple ever-so-quietly rolled out a refresh of its MacBook Pro line. There was no official announcement, and few rumors and speculation preceded the release, which is all but unprecedented for a new Apple product. Sure, Apple just refreshed the MacBook Pro earlier this year, and its signature laptop has never generated the mass hype that the iPhone and iPad have. But for a company whose every whisper is analyzed by Apple fanatics the world over, we're surprised at how low-key this refresh rolled out.
That said, the latest MacBook Pro isn't a landmark revamp of the line, by any means. All told, the understated improvements match the understated announcement. The 13-inch version of the machine simply got a slightly faster processor than the early-2011 13-inch MacBook Pro had, jumping from a 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 to a 2.4GHz one. (Both are dual-core chips.)
The $1,799 15-inch base model, which we reviewed here, gets a slightly more impressive bump. This MacBook goes from a 2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor to a 2.2GHz quad-core Core i7, and it gets an excellent improvement in graphics, from a single AMD Radeon HD 6490M graphics chip to a switchable-graphics arrangement. The late-2011 model is powered by both the Intel HD Graphics 3000 circuitry that's built into the processor chip and separate AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics, backed by 512MB of onboard video memory.
Our test unit also had a 500GB hard drive. In sum, the base-model 15-inch MacBook Pro now has most of the components that were previously found in the top-level 15-inch MacBook Pro—and for $400 less. The new, higher-end $2,199 15-inch model, as well as the 17-inch MacBook Pro, also get speedier processors, better graphics, and larger hard drives than their previous iterations, without price increases. But before we go in to more detail about the inside of the new MacBook, let's talk about the outside.
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