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This is going to be a long post, so get your reading glasses ready! We have a lot to cover.
Let's start with something I've been dying to finally see -- new Cinema Displays!
New Cinema Displays
The latest 24-inch Cinema Displays now look like the the iMacs (and by extension, the latest MacBook and MacBook Pros) with a glossy black front and a silver back. The glass display looks great, but the cool innovation is the three-prong connector that we talked about during the liveblog. One goes to the MagSafe, one goes to USB and one goes to the Mini Display Port. $899 is a bit more than other comparable 24-inch displays, but nothing else comes bundled with that MagSafe. Aesthetically, it's the only one that matches with the design features of your MB or MBP, so if that's important to you, you've got a new monitor.
Apple's Cinema Displays are now known as LED Displays, for reasons that you can probably figure out yourself 
. The new displays come with a built-in iSight camera, mic, and speakers.
Essentially, Apple just made their screens propriatary to their own wires, which, I guess sucks, but if you don't lose the wire that Apple gives you, you should be fine. What's really cool to me about this new adapter, is that it will charge a MacBook Air, MacBook, or MacBook Pro when connected to the display, which of course, saves you a 3-prong!
LED advantages
All this talk about LED technology. What’s so great about it? A lot. LEDs are solid-state light sources that light up very quickly, so there’s no waiting for your display when you connect your new MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air. You experience full screen brightness instantly. And because LEDs are mercury-free, this harmful toxin isn’t released during recycling or disposal.
Height:18.84 inches (47.84 cm)Width:22.57 inches (57.32 cm)Depth:7.76 inches (19.71 cm)Weight:21 pounds (9.5 kg) And, still Apple still has something about their displays that still hasn't been addressed. Can you guess what it is?Display
24-inch (viewable) LED-backlit thin film transistor (TFT) active-matrix liquid crystal display
- Supported resolutions:
- 1920 by 1200 pixels
- 1280 by 800 pixels
- 1024 by 640 pixels
- 1920 by 1200 pixels
- Display colors (maximum): 16.7 million
- Viewing angle: 178° horizontal; 178° vertical
- Brightness (typical): 330 cd/m2
- Contrast ratio (typical): 1000:1
- Response time (typical): 14 ms
That's right, the response time is STILL a whopping 14ms, which is painful to watch while gaming or watching videos.
For more info on the new LED (Cinema) Displays, see here: http://www.apple.com...s/features.html
So let's move right along, shall we?
New MacBooks
It defies Apple convention. MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs and PowerBooks—those systems don the silver finish of aircraft-grade aluminum. iBooks and MacBooks? They can settle for plain old white.
That was, until today when Apple presented their redesigned MacBooks featuring the new "unibody enclosure" manufacturing process. So is a new finish and more rugged build enough to make the budget laptop feel like its premium counterparts? In one word, yes.
The new MacBook feels exactly like the new MacBook Pro, just smaller. Literally, if there was not a "MacBook" label on the front, you could not tell the difference without closely examining the ports. The same buttonless trackpad, the same glossy black frame, the same beveled edges, the same keyboard with back-lit keys and the same optical-drive placement make this look a lot like the fabled 12-inch MacBook Pro we've been waiting for...even though it technically isn't.
Let's talk about that buttonless glass trackpad for a moment. It's really fantastic. The finish is just right, providing that perfect balance of tactile resistance generally reserved for the MacBook Pro trackpad.
The feeling of physically clicking the trackpad (like a mouse button), while it sounds awkward for sure, is something I unconsciously adjusted to in seconds. The only oddity was when I used a two finger press for right clicking. On my current MacBook Pro, right clicking is a simple two finger tap and I caught myself tapping as opposed to pressing frequently when I right clicked. (If you can't adjust to the clicking pad, you can simply turn the click feature off and default to touch settings alone).
The 4-finger awareness is better than I thought. A simple swipe of four fingers pops up Expose. So could I fool it? Maybe if I only used 3 fingers. Maybe if I slipped in a thumb. Nope. It was too smart for me.
A quick tour of Spore outputted on the new 30-inch Cinema Display showed that while the MacBook's new NVIDIA card is decent, it's not a flawless, unbelievable gaming machine. The system achieved passable framerates while running at 1280x800 resolution at mostly medium settings (like shadows and textures). Not horrible, but not great either.
It'll be interesting to hear the final verdict on the new metal MacBook. But for now, as a premium computer for the average Apple user, I'm digging it.
New MacBook Pros
The MacBook Pro is similar to the MacBooks and iMac; The screen is bright and goes almost right up against the edge of the display portion of the top. The keyboard is similar to the MacBook Air and has the now-standard Apple separation between keys. Trackpad action is super smooth (the friction coefficient is lower than the trackpads that came before), which gives you much slicker feel when gesturing. For those of you that are afraid that your mouse button has been killed in favor of just a "touch" click, don't worry—the entire trackpad is a clicker. You can even assign part of the pad to right click. The whole thing works just about as well as the old button.
Also improved are the pads on the bottom of the body, which are now more like raised mounds than nubs. The hard drive/battery case comes off easily and you can actually get to both these things easily for hard drive replacement. The power button is smaller (nice), the hinge is strong enough to hold up the laptop backwards (also nice), and the vents in the back seem to be slightly smaller and more "blended" into the body. The body is thinner than it was, but it's nothing super dramatic.
Everything about the Pro is solid, and although we didn't forcefully try to bend it in half (too many witnesses), we gently felt how much more solid it is than current models, and it felt good. The rounded cover and edges add a more MacBook Air feel to the line, which is a welcome change to the more razor-sharp edges of previous models.
The glossy screen is what it is, and is bright, fast to light up and a bit too reflective if you position it with the sun behind you (no matte option anymore). Quick verdict is that it's definitely a step up in most ways over your current MacBook Pro.
Well, there you have it folks. If you actually read through this whole article, good for you, here's a cookie.
So, let's discuss away.
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