The new Macbooks

As you may have heard, Apple is rumoured to release new notebooks on Tuesday, October 14th. And the million dollar question is: "How will these new Macbooks look like, what features will they have and how much will they cost?"


The Cult of Mac has a great post that tries to answer this question. Here's their potential set of features for the new Macbooks:

• Penryn Core 2 Duo chips: 2.4GHz, 2.66GHz, 2.8GHz, and 3.06GHz.
• 2GB of RAM (MacBook); 4GB of RAM (MacBook Pro).
• Hard drives: 160GB — 320GB.
• Glossy widescreen TFT screens. On the MacBook: 13.3-inch (1,280×800 resolution); MacBook Pro: 13.8-inch (1,366×768).
• Integrated NVIDIA graphics system.
• New, all-aluminum enclosures, white, black and silver.
  
• Enclosure is tapered: very thin at the sides, thicker inthe middle, like the iPhone 3G and MacBook Air.
• Magnetic lid latch on all models (replacing mechanical clasps on the MacBook Pro).
• All ports on left side — including FireWire 800.
• Slot-loading optical drive on right (no Blu-ray).
• Extra-large battery pack running full width of computer at the front, under the touchpad.
• Recessed keypad like MacBook Air. Keys are Chicklet style on MacBooks, black and backlight on Pros.
• Price: Starting at $800. This is the mysterious “product transition” that Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said in July would impact Apple’s gross margins.

As some of these features may seem really interesting (specially the price part) I find it hard to believe that Apple will refresh their Macbook line. At least, not as shown on this list of features. Instead they should unify Macbooks and Macbook Pros into one single notebook with a wide range of customization (at the level of CPU, RAM and screen size/resolution). With the rate of advance in computer components, the difference between the Macbook and the Macbook Pro comes down to screen sizes and dedicated graphic boards. And I guess there's no point in having different names for more or less the same laptops.

But as every Apple rumour, it's always difficult to know exactly what to expect and as new images of how the new Macbooks will look like are released across the entire web, the hype will grow. And every doubts will be shatered on Tuesday. Let's wait and see.