Steve Jobs On Tradeoffs In New 13″ MacBook Pro

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Steve Jobs has sent another of his off-the-cuff customer emails, this time about the not-so-fast chip in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Some observers are complaining that the 13-inch MacBook still sports a rather lowly Core 2 Duo chip, which also powered the previous generation machine. Meanwhile, the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBooks got speedy Intel Core i5 and i7 processors.

One MacRumors reader sent Steve Jobs a note about it, who responded that Apple chose to offer better graphics and battery life rather than an increase in CPU performance.

Jobs wrote:

We chose killer graphics plus 10 hour battery life over a very small CPU speed increase. Users will see far more performance boost from the speedy graphics.

The 13-inch MacBook comes with a custom NVIDIA GeForce 320 integrated graphics chipset, custom made for Apple. Apple claims the new chipset is 80% better than the previous model, while offering comparable battery life — up to 10 hours on a single charge. The 320M is the “fastest integrated graphics processor on the market,” Apple claims.

As well as Core i5 and i7 processors, the updated 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models get two graphics systems: an integrated Intel graphics chipset for everyday display tasks, and a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M card for high-performance tasks. The machines automatically switch between the systems, prefering the lower-power integrated chipset whenever possible to increase battery life.

Meanwhile, early benchmarks from Gizmodo show a massive speed boost for the Core i7-based MacBook: MacBook Pro 15-inch Core i7 Benchmarked: It’s So Fast.

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