No iPhone SDK This Week, but MacBook Pro Updates Seem Likely

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on February 25

The rumor mill is buzzing that a MacBook Pro update is imminent, and that sounds about right to me. It’s about time for sure. The Buyer’s Guide over at Macrumors.com (a great part of that site, btw) notes that its been 265 days since the the last MacBook Pro update, whereas the average time between updates is 186 days.

The expectation is that these latest MBPs will contain Intel’s Penryn chips, and that the 17-inch model will boast an LED-based screen. Chris Foresman at Ars Technica wonders aloud if a solid state hard drive option might also be part of the package as it is on the MacBook Air.

I’m also wondering if we’ll see a serious redesign on the MBP, or if it will remain more or less the same in terms of look and feel, and receive mostly incremental improvements. While it’s hard to figure exactly how Apple might fundamentally improve on the MacBook Pro in its current form, it has remained, for the most part, unchanged since the days of the PowerBook G4. The iconic metallic look, whether Titanium or Aluminum, the 15-inch wide-aspect screen, have truly defined the upper end of Apple’s notebook designs for the better part of a decade now without a major change on the outside.

So will it be something really new? I think not. If it were, it would have been featured as part of the Steve Jobs keynote. Seeing how it wasn’t I suspect that if new MacBook Pros appear to tomorrow, the biggest change about them will be on the inside, and maybe new screens, and a multitouch-enabled touchpad on the outside. Stay tuned.

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