Zit Seng's Blog

A Singaporean's technology and lifestyle blog

The Plastic MacBook Lives On

200807203584Even though Apple has progressively upgraded all its MacBooks to aluminum unibody designs and rebranded them MacBook Pros, the white plastic wasn’t expected to die just yet. This has been reaffirmed by it’s latest upgrade in yesterday’s surprise product announcement from Apple. The plastic MacBook now features a polycarbonate unibody design, LED backlight screen, glass multitouch trackpad and a built-in battery pushing battery life to 7 hours.

The upgraded MacBook sells for the same price (US$999, or S$1588). The unibody design makes it feel sturdier than before, with zero flex when you pick it up from a corner as Engadget describes (they have an unboxing preview posted). There’s no firewire and no SD slot though. I think, overall, this upgrade isn’t too much to shout about. Apple has made little changes that they have already done for the rest of their MacBook Pros, bringing the features of the MacBook more in line with all of its bigger brothers.

There are a few other product updates, from the iMac, Mac Mini, Time Capsule, Airport, etc.

The one thing that caught my attention was the new Magic Mouse. Yes, no more Mighty Mouse (perhaps due to a law suit bring brought against Apple by Man and Machine over the name). This new Magic Mouse is flatter, and its surface is even more sleek than ever before. That’s because… it now has no visible buttons! It’s surface is now a big multitouch sensor which will, of course, support gestures to pan, scroll, swipe, etc. I thought the new flatter design doesn’t so nice as the previous Mighty Mouse, but perhaps it needs to be such so that the multitouch experience will be better. (Imagine if your trackpad was too high and too curved, it might feel difficult to use.) The new Magic Mouse will be available at the end of October, and at S$98, it’s cheaper than the Mighty Mouse (S$108) it replaces.

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