Given that the articles says its not the penryn upgrade many expected the page link of "apple_announces_penryn_powered_macbookpro/" seems a little confusing!

My understanding is that this IS the Penryn upgrade... given away by the 6MB L2 cache??

Long enough to garner some anticipation

They don't come with a remote any more - Apple wants 15 quid instead.

I want the mid-range MacBook and have saved 50 quid by not having to pay for a larger HD but I have lost 15 quid because I want a remote.

I still 35 quid up by waiting for the upgrade and I get a faster laptop for that although is it worth waiting for Centreno 2 to come out with the higher FSB speeds?

It could be a while before Apple incorporates the technology. When Apple was using IBM they could keep things secret but now we know well in advance what Intel are doing so the secrecy is a little pointless. Except that is generates hype and free advertising etc.

I am simply amazed that Apple can profess to be using the most up-to-the-minute technology and yet still be pushing a product that uses a CD-RW drive. Come on Apple, it's not 1999 anymore...

"Again, 2GB of 667MHz DDR 2 memory comes as standard."

Not according to the Apple store. The base model still comes with 1GB.

So Centreno is supposed to replace the Core 2 in record time. Is it worth the wait? Will we get quad core CPUs in laptops then?

When when when!?!? My $100 iPhone coupon is still burning a hole in my pocket.

Finally had enough.

Somewhere in Steve Job's attic is an old oil painting of an LCII - its covered in boils and scars and sores and looks 1000 years old.

Apple makes me want to smoke crack.

I think I'm suffering from Apple Fatigue Syndrome, a chronic disease caused by overexposure to Apple's sickeningly twee and insipid marketing. Symptoms include irrational hostility to Apple products and feelings of impotence when confronted by a society that thinks the behaviour of a niche technology company selling overpriced toys to business execs actually has some kind of deeper social significance.

One thing to note is the macbook pro comes with with dual-link DVI support and 512MB of GDDR3 memory. Big complaint I had before was mediocre GPU (although you can not truly say a good mobil replacement is available yet that won't do serious damage to battery life) but the best thing was you got the GDDR3 memory. A lot of the non apple laptops I looked did not include the GDDR3 memory but gave you more graphics memory overall resulting in older Macbook 17's "whomping" the Wintel laptops in display tests except heavy AA and textures that utilized the extra 256MB of graphics memory. But now its high speed graphics memory and 512MB of it in a laptop. I'm not a gamer, but I have to admit I want something semi decent.

Have to pay a "outside the USA" tax, but here you can salary sacrifice so you save 40% off the quoted price at the end of the year when you do your income taxes, so not bad overall. Snuck in an iPod Touch 16GB and a backpack as well (I doubt the tax man is tech savy).

The good thing about dealing with stores here is I had a discussion with the salesman over the remote and he said his system still showed it came with the remote and if it did not get to them with it he would throw one in for free. (made a happy customer with such a small gesture). Additionally they do all the upgrades to 4GB memory themselves so no Apple Built-to-order ram price gouging.

One thing I opted for the slightly smaller 200GB hard drive because it spins at the faster 7200 rpm which is 28% increase in speed which for me is very important because of the heavy virtualization I will be doing, running linux and Windows on the Macbook Pro. -- I'd recommend the same to anyone else venturing down this path.

First Mac laptop ever for me, as I've always owned and bought Dells, and I'm really exciting to give this thing a whirl.

Penryn is just a minor CPU revision. These are Penryn based laptops.

The European Apple Stores online had some issues and didn't show proper specs. I doubt the Australia store gets better hardware than UK *wink* our specs are more inline with the US store.

And yes if you really want Blue Ray internal slim drive you can buy it. If you feel like spending a $1000 US Dollars and whatever the shipping is to get it to you. Slim internal trayless slot feeding Blue Ray drives are still way too expensive to include currently as an option to put in a Macbook from the get go for Apple but you are free to spend your own money to get one if it truly is worth life or death over:

http://store.fastmac.com/product_info.php?products_id=338

too little too late , the existing world market has already decided as to whom is the real winner is and Apple will always remain a bit player to the end !

I bought a new MacBook last night and Apple are up to old tricks ... upgrade some features and remove others. They've got rid of the backlit keyboard.

Cries silently into his KoolAid.

(because she wouldn't have noticed)

"...according to the Apple store. The base model still comes with 1GB," the complaint about CD/RW drives, and lack of backlit keyboards:

Go back to the Apple Store and look again:

Pro 15-inch Widescreen Display

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

200GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm

Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English

SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB

The Macbook has never had the backlit keyboard... one of the reasons i won't get one!

As for the CD-RW drive, there may only be a small cost difference to a DVD-RW drive these days, but it all adds up in manufacture, combine this with the fact that not everyone wants a DVD-RW drive, my other half has just bought an iMac, it has a DVD-RW, she has zero need for one, i'd rather have saved £20 and only had a CD-RW drive in it... given an 8Gb flash drive costs approximately £15 these days and is reusable everyday - what's the issue?

IMO Apple made a great move scrapping the optical drive from the Air, optical drives in laptops aren't really needed anymore!