The fruit-themed computer manufacturer has finally made an effort to bring the MacBook Pro into the modern era. Boasting new Core i5 and i7 series processors and an updated (albeit last generation) graphics card, the new MacBook Pro sells at a curiously similar price to the MacBook Pro of last week.
Take a look at what’s changed. I left the HP Envy 15 in for a comparison to a modern laptop with non-Apple brand pricing. Once again I am using close-to-base-model because a larger deviation hurts the Mac price far more, but can also be done after-market for cheaper, and is thus pretty unfair.
| Part | MacBook Pro 15 (1 week ago) |
MacBook Pro 15 (Today) |
HP Envy 15 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core2 Duo T9600 @ 2.80GHz (Passmark score: 1995) (2 cores) |
Intel Core i7 M 620 @ 2.60GHz (Passmark score: 2871) (2 cores) |
Intel Core i7 720QM @ 1.60GHz (Passmark score: 3296) (4 cores) |
| RAM | 4GB DDR3 | 4GB DDR3 | 4GB DDR3 |
| Video | NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512MB of GDDR3 120 gigaFLOPs OpenGL 2.1 |
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512MB of GDDR3 182 gigaFLOPs OpenGL 2.1 |
Mobility Radeon HD 5830 1GB of GDDR3 800 gigaFLOPs OpenGL 3.2 |
| Screen | 15.4″ 1440×900 |
15.4″ 1680×1050 |
15.6″ 1920×1080 |
| HDD | 500GB SATA @ 7200 rpm |
500GB SATA @ 7200 rpm |
500GB SATA @ 7200 rpm |
| Price: | $2,399.00 | $2,399.00 | $1,749.99 |
Little else has changed on the Pro aside from the processor, video card, and max screen resolution. The supported DirectX and OpenGL are still still 10.1 and 2.1 respectively, and the laptop’s price remains unchanged*.
The updated video card is NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 330M, which is an over-clocked GT 240M, which itself is just an over-clocked GT 230M (June 2009), which explains the aging DirectX and OpenGL versions.
Nonetheless, thanks to Apple’s staunch refusal to discount hardware that was already two years old, it is a significantly better time to buy a MacBook Pro than it was just one week ago, be it new or used. Every other laptop manufacturer has had to reduce prices on aged models or introduce newer models in order to stay competitive, but it seems that Apple is immune to Father Time, perhaps because its consumer base practices an isolationism unseen since the days of Hai jin.
This is of course not a bad thing in itself. If you’re running an all-Mac shop then right now is quite possibly the best time to buy a MacBook Pro. Yesterday, however, was quite possibly the worst.
* As configured above. I believe the minimum price for a base 15-inch MacBook Pro is slightly less than it was previous.