Apple has brought its new MacBook consumer notebook family to India, offering seven models in three product categories. All of them are built using the new mechanical design which uses a single ‘unibody’ ultra light aluminium chasis — which enables the company to claim the lightest, thinnest title in their class, for many of the offerings.

The most radical change inside is an across-the-board shift to a graphics-intensive integrated chip set from NVIDIA — making Apple the first user of the new GeForce 9400M 3-D processor. Apple retains faith in Intel for the main processor — harnessing its Core 2 Duo chips with varying speeds from 2 GHz to 2.5 GHz.

The seven new releases include the MacBook, MacBookPro and MacBook Air categories. While the 13.3-inch MacBooks are aimed at lay users (Rs. 79,700 and Rs. 96,500); the 15.4-inch Pro machines are optimised with a ‘stepney’ graphics chip from NVIDIA to deliver high rendering and editing speeds for visual computing professionals (Rs. 1.20 lakh to Rs. 1.45 lakh).

The 17-inch MacBook Pro is the top of the line at Rs. 1.62 lakh. The ultra thin-n-light 13.3-inch MacBook Air is priced in the Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 1.50 lakh range depending on chip speed and on board memory and storage.

All the machines share Apple’s trademark design innovations: a gesture-sensitive touch pad; recessed ports; displays back lit with LEDs; light-adjusting keyboards. “They are designed to be as beautiful inside as they are outside,” says Angeline Tan Apple’s Product Marketing Manager for Portables and Wireless (Asia Pac).

Ms. Tan announced that another recent Apple launch, a 24-inch high definition Cinema Display expected to be priced at Rs. 60,900 would be available in India next month.

Source : The Hindu