Apple has now announced the new iBook MacBook to complete the transition of their laptop line from PPC to Intel CPUs.  As I started reading about its features I was thinking that this was going to be an amazing little laptop for a very nice price.  But then I saw the graphics card that it uses, the Intel GMA 950 which is the same crappy graphics card that the new Mac Minis use.  This means that there is no replacement for the 12" PowerBook - a Pro-level laptop in a small form factor.  So I guess Pro (as in MacBook Pro) means graphics card and sans Pro (just MacBook) means slow integrated graphics.  Everything about the new MacBooks is great except for the integrated video.

 

I originally posted the rest of this on MacSlash, but it's still good...  Now, the Intel GMA 950 is probably closely equivalent to the ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 (32 MB of DDR VRAM) in the last generation of iBooks. Given that the ATI card has dedicated VRAM, however, it probably has the edge on the integrated Intel 950. But if we compare the new MacBook against the 12" PowerBook with the NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 (64 MB of DDR SDRAM) then it really doesn't look very good.

And besides just comparing it to the last generation of PPC laptops (which have been out for a while) shouldn't we be expecting a major leap in performance in the new MacBooks? Certainly the new dual-core Intel processors are a major leap in performance over the old G4s. Why can't Apple deliver the same (or if not the same at least a moderate) leap in performance with a good GPU?

For those looking for a great replacement to the 12" PowerBook it looks like Apple didn't deliver very well. It will be a great all-around laptop, but for anyone needing a little more graphics horsepower in a smaller 12-13" package then you're really out of luck.