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Apple has refreshed its little white MacBook. The laptop now includes, among other features, 10 hours of battery life per charge, good for up to 1,000 charges.
Said to be the longest-lasting MacBook battery ever, its capability comes thanks to “advances in battery chemistry and adaptive charging technology,” Apple explained on its site. It also estimated that those 1,000 charges should make the MacBook “good for about five years of typical use.”
Also new to the polycarbonate unibody MacBook is a glass Multi-Touch trackpad, which supports multifinger input for scrolling, pinching, swiping and rotating images. Plus, “If you come from a right-click world,” said Apple-talking to you, former PC users-“you can configure a right-click area on the trackpad or simply press with two fingers.”
While its elder sibling, the MacBook Pro, received a new Nvidia GeForce 330M processor during its April refresh, the smaller Mac has received a Nvidia GeForce 320M-good for an 80-percent power boost over the previous MacBook. Great for games like “Spore” and “Call of Duty,” according to Apple the Nvidia processor additionally makes for super-quick e-mailing and Web surfing.
Other new goodies? The MacBook’s glossy, LED-backlit, 13.3-inch display is 1,280 by 800 pixels and “greener than ever,” Apple said, explaining that it’s “power-efficient, free of harmful toxins such as mercury and made of arsenic-free glass.”
The power connection is now a magnet-based MagSafe, so the klutzes among us can simply stumble over a cord, instead of dragging a computer to the floor; and a built-in iSight camera has been added, which users can pair with Apple’s iChat software and the MacBook’s stereo speakers and omnidirectional microphone.
The MacBook measures 1.08 by 13 by 9.12 inches, weighs 4.7 pounds and supports 802.11 a/b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. There’s a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB of on-chip shared Level 2 cache, 2GB of 1,066MHz DDR3 (double data rate 3) SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM) and two SO-DIMM (dual in-line memory module) slots that support up to 4GB of memory. The hard drive is 250GB, and there’s an 8x slot-loading SuperDrive.
However, Apple offers the option of adding up to 4GB of memory and an up to 500GB hard drive, as well as Mini DisplayPort video adapters.
On the MacBook’s sides, you’ll also find a Mini DisplayPort, two USB 2.0 ports, audio in and out, and a Kensington lock slot.
The MacBook starts at $999 and ships within 24 hours for free.
Despite fears that Mac sales could diminish with the success of Apple’s iPad tablet, according to a May 17 report, it’s sales of iPods, and not Macs, that are dropping.