Apple upgrades white MacBook with nVidia graphics

Apple has quietly updated the specification of its white 13.3in MacBook (that’s the plastic one).

The polycarbonate MacBook now has a specification closer to the recently launched aluminium 13.3in ‘unibody’ MacBook and has the new 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 1066MHz frontside bus, 2Gb DDR2 RAM and nVidia GeForce 9400M graphics. Hard disk capacities now go up to 320Gb, but the optical drive remains unchanged, as does the price – $999.

The bad news is that Apple’s upgrade has yet to roll out to the UK, so we’re still stuck with a white 13.3in MacBook with the old 2.1Ghz Core 2 Duo chip, 1Gb DDR2 RAM and Intel GMA X3100 graphics.

Update: The Apple UK store now has the upgraded white MacBook too and as in the US, the price stays the same - £719. 

The upgrade could well be to bring the white MacBook up to spec for OS X 10.6. Codenamed ‘ Snow Leopard’, this major update of the Mac operating system includes OpenCL support, which allows applications to exploit the graphics processor for tasks other than displaying images. In other words, the more powerful the graphics chip, the better – hence the dumping of Intel’s GMA X3100.

[ Apple UK | US]