Apple Bumps Up MacBook and MacBook Pro

Apple has quietly updated its MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks, adding MacBook Pro build-to-order options and taking consumer-oriented MacBooks to the Santa Rosa architecture.

Without tooting its own horn (even a little bit), Apple has launched updates for its MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook lines.

At the high end, the MacBook Pros can now be custom ordered with a 2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (up from a top speed of 2.4 GHz), and a 250 GB hard drive is now available for professionally-oriented notebook.

Apple’s update to its consumer-oriented MacBook line is more interesting, however: the company has bumped the system from Intel’s Calistoga architecture to the current Santa Rosa architecture, and boosted the MacBook’s specs in other areas: the systems can now handle 4 GB of RAM, sport a 800 MHz frontside bus, and offer the Intel GMA X3100 graphics controller with 144 MB of RAM shared with main memory. The MacBook also offers new media controls in the row of function keys. Prices for the MacBook remain unchanged, starting at $1,099 and going up to $1,499 for the MacBook with the cool black case.

Both the new MacBook and MacBook Pro ship with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which is raising some eyebrows in organizations which have not certified Apple’s newest operating system for use. According to Apple, the version of Leopard shipping with the new MacBook model can only be installed on those new MacBooks, and other Leopard installation discs are not supported.