Apple upgrades MacBook Pro line

The company has tweaked its MacBook Pro portfolio with faster speeds, more storage, and upgrades to the video processor.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer

Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.

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Lance Whitney

Oct. 24, 2011 5:51 a.m. PT

2 min read

Apple has refreshed its MacBook Pros with small but noteworthy bumps in speed, storage, and graphics power, and all prices remain the same.

Unveiled this weekend, the upgrades run across the board to include the 13-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch models.

The entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro now sports a 2.4GHz processor, inching up from 2.3GHz previously, while its hard drive capacity has been upgraded to 500GB from 320GB. The $1,499 13-inch MacBook Pro is now powered by a 2.8GHz processor, from 2.7GHz previously, and the hard drive has been beefed up to 750 gigabytes from 500GB.

The entry-level model still has an Intel Core i5 CPU, which was introduced earlier this year, while the more expensive edition is packed with an i7 processor. Both units offer 4GB of RAM to start and come with Intel HD Graphics 3000 onboard video.

Next in line, the $1,799 15-inch MacBook Pro's i7 processor now runs at 2.2GHz, up from 2Ghz. The hard drive size stays the same at 500GB, but the graphics adapter has been upgraded to AMD's Radeon HD 6750M card with 512MB of RAM. Graphics were previous fueled by an AMD Radeon HD 6490M card with only 256MB of memory.

Finally, the high-end $2,499 17-inch edition has been given a 2.4GHz processor, up from 2.2GHz. Video has also been enhanced with an AMD Radeon HD 6770M card with 1GB of RAM, compared with a Radeon HD 6750M previously.

Apple has upgraded its MacBook Pro lineup with a series of minor but useful enhancements. Screenshot by CNET

As always, buyers can customize the laptops by adding more memory (up to 8GB) and a larger conventional hard drive or a solid-state drive. The upgrades to Apple's Pro laptop lineup were rumored to kick off this week, with few major changes anticipated beyond the faster speed, heftier storage, and video card improvements.

Apple last refreshed the MacBook Pro lineup this past February with some significant enhancements, including a move to Intel's Core i5 and i7 chips away from the older Core 2 Duo processor. Users also found the new Thunderbolt high-speed port on the units, which is capable of delivering a quick performance when transferring data and displaying video.