CUPERTINO, California: Apple may have rolled out a fresh crate of firm favourites but the company didn't offer new low prices as much as anticipated. With the market turmoil and a tough holiday-selling season ahead, it was not unexpected though disappointing.

Still, those who can't wait to take a bite out the latest will love Apple's refreshed MacBook range which features an all-aluminum model that uses a new manufacturing process to produce a solid one-piece laptop that competes with the super-slim MacBook Air.

“Traditionally notebooks are made from multiple parts. With the new MacBook, we’ve replaced all of those parts with just one part—the unibody,” said Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of Industrial Design.

“The MacBook’s unibody enclosure is made from a single block of aluminum, making the new MacBook fundamentally thinner, stronger and more robust with a fit and finish that we’ve never even dreamed of before.”

The 13-inch MacBook and 15-inch MacBook Pro which now measure some 2.4cm thin and weigh just over 2kgs, includes another new feature -- a large glass Multi-Touch trackpad. This supports gestures such as pinching, rotating and swiping first seen in the iPod Touch and later the iPhone, as well as a new gesture for switching between applications.

The Multi-Touch trackpad also offers more room to move and the ability for users to click virtually anywhere on the trackpad.

Those who love the Mac for its rich graphics support will appreciate the new range which come with a freshly developed NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor specially created with Apple for the new MacBooks.

This is a new 3D integrated graphics processor with 16 parallel processing cores which promises performance that's five times faster than earlier MacBooks, as the circuitry is designed to accelerate game software and improve the output of movies.

The new NVIDIA graphics processor will also be included in the updated 17-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air being shipped from Wednesday along with the new MacBooks.

If Apple needs to appeal to the masses even more, it is flying the green flag with this range of Macs.

“Apple has invented a whole new way of building notebooks from a single block of aluminum. And, just as important, they are the industry’s greenest notebooks,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO at the unveiling of the new line-up.

By having a LED-backlit display, the new Macs use up to 30 percent less energy and eliminate the use of mercury found in industry standard fluorescent tube backlights. The edge-to-edge screen also uses completely arsenic-free glass.

Being seen with a Mac has always given that little extra to one's image. And with the new range, what you're seen with will be even more important.

The smaller, more affordable, lower specs 13-inch MacBook is still plain-jane white. Of course, you can argue that you are in the league of those who love the clean look.

As for the silvery aluminium coat, it comes with higher specs like more hard disk space and of course, a higher price tag.

Either way, set your budget to work up from S$1000.

-CNA/sf