Apple MacBook 13" 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2GB 250GB HD Overview
Introducing the new 13-inch MacBook.
New design. New features. New technologies.
All engineered to standards that don’t even exist yet.
To build something truly different, you need to work in a truly different way. Apple designers and engineers work together through every stage of product development. It’s a partnership that makes innovation possible. And it’s exactly how the new MacBook was created. With its breakthrough unibody enclosure, industry-first features, and environmentally sound design, it’s a revolution in the way notebooks are made.
Until now, all notebooks were designed the same way. By assembling multiple pieces to create a single enclosure. But once you include all the necessary parts, you add size, weight, complexity, and more opportunities for failure. Solving a problem like this required more than an incremental change. It required a breakthrough. To create the new MacBook, the design and engineering teams devised a way to replace many parts with just one. That one part is called the unibody — a seamless enclosure carved from a single piece of aluminum.
Unibody Enclosure
Every MacBook starts its life as a single piece of aluminum.
Of course, building only one part creates its own set of challenges. When you have multiple parts that are fastened together, tolerances don’t need to be perfect. You have wiggle room, both literally and figuratively. But when one part is responsible for many functions, it’s critical to manufacture that part with absolute precision, down to the micron. Every time. Millions of times over. There was only one way to achieve this level of precision: mill the unibody from a solid block of aluminum using computer numerical control, or CNC, machines — the kind used by the aerospace industry to build mission-critical spacecraft components.
When you pick up a new MacBook, you immediately notice the difference. The entire enclosure is thinner and lighter. It looks polished and refined. And it feels strong and durable — perfect for life inside (and outside) your briefcase or backpack.
The thickness of a notebook depends on the technology inside. LCD displays typically use cold cathode fluorescent lamps, or CCFLs, to create light and project a picture onto a screen. But that poses two problems. First, these lamps require more space, so the display can be only so thin. Second, just like the fluorescent lights in your home or office, the ones inside a CCFL display take time to warm up before they reach full brightness. That’s a lose-lose situation. And it’s why Apple engineers chose LED backlight technology for the new MacBook.
An LED backlight creates the same amount of brightness in less space. So you can make the structure that houses an LED display much thinner. And unlike fluorescent lamps, an LED backlight reaches maximum brightness instantly.
Look at the MacBook display and you’ll see another big difference. Glass. That edge-to-edge, uninterrupted glass display does more than look good. It also adds structure to the LED display beneath it. And there’s no metal frame (another extraneous part) to distract you from what’s onscreen.
The new MacBook trackpad has no button because it is the button. That means there’s more room to track, more room to click — left, right, center, and everywhere in between — and one less part. Apple designers and engineers spent countless hours considering things like sensitivity (how much pressure triggers a click?), audio feedback (what does the click sound like?), and friction over the smooth glass surface (what does it feel like?).
And that’s just the hardware. Apple software engineers had a large part to play in the development of the trackpad, too. They incorporated Multi-Touch gestures, including swipe, pinch, rotate, and the new four-finger swipe. The result is the largest, smartest, most ergonomic MacBook trackpad ever. It’s one of many details considered and reconsidered during the design process.
There’s a story behind each part. Take the thumbscoop, for example. It’s the indentation that allows you to open the display. If the scoop is too deep, you put too much pressure on the display to open it. If it’s too shallow, you struggle to open the display. It may seem incidental, but if the thumbscoop is well designed, it makes the difference between a bad experience and a good one. The challenge of the thumbscoop was to create a crisply machined scoop that was still comfortable to use. The designers at Apple worked on hundreds of versions of the thumbscoop — even examining them under an electron microscope — to get it right.
Then there’s the sleep indicator light. An indicator is functional only when it’s indicating something. Look to the right of the thumbscoop. You see nothing. Until you close the display and your MacBook goes to sleep. Then an LED glow appears from inside the enclosure. How? During the CNC process, a machine first thins out the aluminum. Then a laser drill creates small perforations for the LED light to shine through. These holes are so tiny that the aluminum appears seamless when the light is off.
The marriage of electronics and mechanical design makes the new MacBook as advanced on the inside as it is on the outside. The internal architecture has been reengineered from the silicon up. There’s a new logic board. A new chipset. And a new integrated graphics processor — a feat of engineering in itself.
Many notebook computers sacrifice graphics performance in order to save battery life. The new MacBook offers the best of both worlds. The NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor provides up to five times the performance of the previous-generation MacBook without draining your battery. So you can experience high-performance graphics ideal for playing 3D games or watching video.
Because Apple designs both the hardware and the software for the new MacBook, it’s easier to improve things like energy efficiency. Software tells the hard drive to spin down when it’s not in use. It tells the display and battery indicator lights to dim in low-light conditions. And it helps decide whether the CPU or the graphics processor would be best suited to the task at hand. That’s the kind of smart, integrated design that sets MacBook apart from other notebooks.
Top-to-bottom integration also makes MacBook greener than other notebooks. Complete control over how the new MacBook is designed, how it’s manufactured, and how it’s packaged gives Apple an environmental edge. Take the MacBook display, for instance. Conventional CCFL displays use mercury to create a backlight and arsenic to prevent irregularities in the glass. The LED-backlit display on the new MacBook, on the other hand, is both mercury- and arsenic-free. LED backlight technology also conserves energy: This display requires 30 percent less power than a CCFL display.
Mercury and arsenic aren’t the only toxins absent from the new MacBook. Many computer manufacturers have only pledged to eliminate polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from their enclosures and circuit boards. Apple is removing not only PVC and BFRs, but all forms of bromine and chlorine throughout the entire MacBook.
Just how green is the new MacBook? It’s ENERGY STAR compliant, which means it meets the government standard for energy efficiency. It’s also earned EPEAT Gold status, the highest standard for environmental performance in the electronics industry. And every new MacBook is shipped in packaging that’s 41 percent smaller than any previous generation. That translates to fewer trees used for boxes and less fuel used to transport more MacBooks on fewer planes. And at the end of its long, productive life, you can recycle almost all of your MacBook.
Only Apple could make a notebook like this. Hardware and software. Design and engineering. Production and manufacturing. They’re all part of a single process at Apple. When you start using your new MacBook, you’ll discover what that means. The light and sturdy unibody protects the components inside. The LED-backlit display — along with the graphics processor that helps power it — gives you faster games and a brilliant canvas for your photos, movies, and more. The glass Multi-Touch trackpad feels as good as it functions. From the smallest detail to the biggest engineering breakthrough, the new MacBook truly is the next generation of notebooks.
Square one: a solid block of aluminum.
Instead of assembling a notebook from many minor parts, the new MacBook was reinvented from just one: the new, solid-aluminum unibody enclosure. It gets full credit for making MacBook thinner, lighter, and even more stunning. But it’s not all beauty. Because of the unibody, this MacBook is also durable. It was designed to take on your world. So slip it into your backpack or briefcase and pull it out wherever you go — it’s impressive in any setting.
Introducing the new 13-inch MacBook.
New design. New features. New technologies.
All engineered to standards that don’t even exist yet.
To build something truly different, you need to work in a truly different way. Apple designers and engineers work together through every stage of product development. It’s a partnership that makes innovation possible. And it’s exactly how the new MacBook was created. With its breakthrough unibody enclosure, industry-first features, and environmentally sound design, it’s a revolution in the way notebooks are made.
Until now, all notebooks were designed the same way. By assembling multiple pieces to create a single enclosure. But once you include all the necessary parts, you add size, weight, complexity, and more opportunities for failure. Solving a problem like this required more than an incremental change. It required a breakthrough. To create the new MacBook, the design and engineering teams devised a way to replace many parts with just one. That one part is called the unibody — a seamless enclosure carved from a single piece of aluminum.
Unibody Enclosure
Every MacBook starts its life as a single piece of aluminum.
Of course, building only one part creates its own set of challenges. When you have multiple parts that are fastened together, tolerances don’t need to be perfect. You have wiggle room, both literally and figuratively. But when one part is responsible for many functions, it’s critical to manufacture that part with absolute precision, down to the micron. Every time. Millions of times over. There was only one way to achieve this level of precision: mill the unibody from a solid block of aluminum using computer numerical control, or CNC, machines — the kind used by the aerospace industry to build mission-critical spacecraft components.
When you pick up a new MacBook, you immediately notice the difference. The entire enclosure is thinner and lighter. It looks polished and refined. And it feels strong and durable — perfect for life inside (and outside) your briefcase or backpack.
The thickness of a notebook depends on the technology inside. LCD displays typically use cold cathode fluorescent lamps, or CCFLs, to create light and project a picture onto a screen. But that poses two problems. First, these lamps require more space, so the display can be only so thin. Second, just like the fluorescent lights in your home or office, the ones inside a CCFL display take time to warm up before they reach full brightness. That’s a lose-lose situation. And it’s why Apple engineers chose LED backlight technology for the new MacBook.
An LED backlight creates the same amount of brightness in less space. So you can make the structure that houses an LED display much thinner. And unlike fluorescent lamps, an LED backlight reaches maximum brightness instantly.
Look at the MacBook display and you’ll see another big difference. Glass. That edge-to-edge, uninterrupted glass display does more than look good. It also adds structure to the LED display beneath it. And there’s no metal frame (another extraneous part) to distract you from what’s onscreen.
The new MacBook trackpad has no button because it is the button. That means there’s more room to track, more room to click — left, right, center, and everywhere in between — and one less part. Apple designers and engineers spent countless hours considering things like sensitivity (how much pressure triggers a click?), audio feedback (what does the click sound like?), and friction over the smooth glass surface (what does it feel like?).
And that’s just the hardware. Apple software engineers had a large part to play in the development of the trackpad, too. They incorporated Multi-Touch gestures, including swipe, pinch, rotate, and the new four-finger swipe. The result is the largest, smartest, most ergonomic MacBook trackpad ever. It’s one of many details considered and reconsidered during the design process.
There’s a story behind each part. Take the thumbscoop, for example. It’s the indentation that allows you to open the display. If the scoop is too deep, you put too much pressure on the display to open it. If it’s too shallow, you struggle to open the display. It may seem incidental, but if the thumbscoop is well designed, it makes the difference between a bad experience and a good one. The challenge of the thumbscoop was to create a crisply machined scoop that was still comfortable to use. The designers at Apple worked on hundreds of versions of the thumbscoop — even examining them under an electron microscope — to get it right.
Then there’s the sleep indicator light. An indicator is functional only when it’s indicating something. Look to the right of the thumbscoop. You see nothing. Until you close the display and your MacBook goes to sleep. Then an LED glow appears from inside the enclosure. How? During the CNC process, a machine first thins out the aluminum. Then a laser drill creates small perforations for the LED light to shine through. These holes are so tiny that the aluminum appears seamless when the light is off.
The marriage of electronics and mechanical design makes the new MacBook as advanced on the inside as it is on the outside. The internal architecture has been reengineered from the silicon up. There’s a new logic board. A new chipset. And a new integrated graphics processor — a feat of engineering in itself.
Many notebook computers sacrifice graphics performance in order to save battery life. The new MacBook offers the best of both worlds. The NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor provides up to five times the performance of the previous-generation MacBook without draining your battery. So you can experience high-performance graphics ideal for playing 3D games or watching video.
Because Apple designs both the hardware and the software for the new MacBook, it’s easier to improve things like energy efficiency. Software tells the hard drive to spin down when it’s not in use. It tells the display and battery indicator lights to dim in low-light conditions. And it helps decide whether the CPU or the graphics processor would be best suited to the task at hand. That’s the kind of smart, integrated design that sets MacBook apart from other notebooks.
Top-to-bottom integration also makes MacBook greener than other notebooks. Complete control over how the new MacBook is designed, how it’s manufactured, and how it’s packaged gives Apple an environmental edge. Take the MacBook display, for instance. Conventional CCFL displays use mercury to create a backlight and arsenic to prevent irregularities in the glass. The LED-backlit display on the new MacBook, on the other hand, is both mercury- and arsenic-free. LED backlight technology also conserves energy: This display requires 30 percent less power than a CCFL display.
Mercury and arsenic aren’t the only toxins absent from the new MacBook. Many computer manufacturers have only pledged to eliminate polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from their enclosures and circuit boards. Apple is removing not only PVC and BFRs, but all forms of bromine and chlorine throughout the entire MacBook.
Just how green is the new MacBook? It’s ENERGY STAR compliant, which means it meets the government standard for energy efficiency. It’s also earned EPEAT Gold status, the highest standard for environmental performance in the electronics industry. And every new MacBook is shipped in packaging that’s 41 percent smaller than any previous generation. That translates to fewer trees used for boxes and less fuel used to transport more MacBooks on fewer planes. And at the end of its long, productive life, you can recycle almost all of your MacBook.
Only Apple could make a notebook like this. Hardware and software. Design and engineering. Production and manufacturing. They’re all part of a single process at Apple. When you start using your new MacBook, you’ll discover what that means. The light and sturdy unibody protects the components inside. The LED-backlit display — along with the graphics processor that helps power it — gives you faster games and a brilliant canvas for your photos, movies, and more. The glass Multi-Touch trackpad feels as good as it functions. From the smallest detail to the biggest engineering breakthrough, the new MacBook truly is the next generation of notebooks.
Square one: a solid block of aluminum.
Instead of assembling a notebook from many minor parts, the new MacBook was reinvented from just one: the new, solid-aluminum unibody enclosure. It gets full credit for making MacBook thinner, lighter, and even more stunning. But it’s not all beauty. Because of the unibody, this MacBook is also durable. It was designed to take on your world. So slip it into your backpack or briefcase and pull it out wherever you go — it’s impressive in any setting.
Size and weight
Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking2 (based on IEEE 802.11n draft specification); IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatible
Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)
Audio
Processor and memory
Electrical and operating requirements
Height:Connections and expansion
0.95 inch (2.41 cm)
Width:
12.78 inches (32.5 cm)
Depth:
8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
Weight:
4.5 pounds (2.04 kg)1
- MagSafe power port
- Gigabit Ethernet port
- Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)
- Mini DisplayPort
- Audio line in
- Audio line out
- Kensington lock slot
Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking2 (based on IEEE 802.11n draft specification); IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatible
Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)
Audio
- Built-in stereo speakers
- Built-in omnidirectional microphone
- Combined optical digital input/analog line in (minijack)
- Combined optical digital output/analog line out (minijack)
- Supports Apple Stereo Headset with microphone
- 13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with support for millions of colors
- Supported resolutions: 1280 by 800 (native), 1152 by 720, 1024 by 640, and 800 by 500 pixels at 16:10 aspect ratio; 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, and 640 by 480 pixels at 4:3 aspect ratio; 720 by 480 pixels at 3:2 aspect ratio
- Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard (includes Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, QuickTime, iCal, DVD Player, Photo Booth, Front Row, Xcode Developer Tools)
- iLife ’08 (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand)
- Majority of circuit board laminates are free of brominated flame retardants.
- Majority of internal cables are PVC-free.
- Meets ENERGY STAR requirements.
- Received a Silver rating from EPEAT.
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory3
- Extended desktop and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors
- Built-in iSight camera
- Mini DisplayPort
- DVI output using Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter
- VGA output using Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter
- Dual-link DVI output using Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter
- Multi-Touch trackpad for precise cursor control; supports two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, three-finger swipe, four-finger swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag capabilities
- Built-in full-size illuminated keyboard with 78 (U.S.) or 79 (ISO) keys, including 12 function keys and 4 arrow keys (inverted “T” arrangement)
Processor and memory
- 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed
- 1066MHz frontside bus
- 2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 4GB
- 250GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive4
- Optional 320GB 5400-rpm hard drive or 128GB solid-state drive4
- 8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
- Maximum write: 8x DVD-R, DVD+R; 4x DVD-R DL (double layer), DVD+R DL (double layer), DVD-RW, DVD+RW; 24x CD-R; 10x CD-RW
- Maximum read: 8x DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-ROM; 6x DVD-ROM (double layer DVD-9), DVD-R DL (double layer), DVD+R DL (double layer), DVD-RW, and DVD+RW; 24x CD
- 45-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery
- 60W MagSafe Power Adapter with cable management system
- MagSafe power port
Electrical and operating requirements
- Line voltage: 100V to 240V AC
- Frequency: 50Hz to 60Hz
- Operating temperature: 50° to 95° F (10° to 35° C)
- Storage temperature: -13° to 113° F (-24° to 45° C)
- Relative humidity: 0% to 90% noncondensing
- Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet
- Maximum storage altitude: 15,000 feet
- Maximum shipping altitude: 35,000 feet
- Actual weight varies by configuration and manufacturing process.
- Wireless Internet access requires a base station or other wireless access point and Internet access; fees may apply. Some ISPs are not currently compatible with AirPort.
- Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 144MB. An additional 16MB is required when using an external display.
- 1GB=1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
- Battery life depends on configuration and use. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information. The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word-processing document with display brightness set to 50%.
- MacBook
- Display cleaning cloth
- 60W MagSafe Power Adapter, AC wall plug, and power cord
- Lithium-polymer battery
- Install/restore DVDs
- Printed and electronic documentation
