Last week Apple lannounced an update to its laptop line launching the new 15” Mac book pro and a 13” Mac book, plus an entry level Mac book ($1000) in a white plastic case.

The new Mac book pro and Mac book have been redesigned using an innovative laptop body, machined out of a single block of aluminium, this new “unibody construction” process makes for a more solid laptop. The chassis is one piece, made stronger by its lack of connecting corners—and less prone to manufacturing flaws, according to Apple.

This is an application of monocoque designs, which was used in cars as early as the late 30’s in fighter plane construction (the Spitfire is an example of monocoque construction).

The other main difference is the inclusion of a second discrete graphics card in the Mac Book Pro.

The Mac Book features a GeForce 9400M integrated graphics card that apple claims is 5X faster than similar offerings from Intel. The Macbook Pro features that same integrated graphics card, but then adds an additional 256MB or 512MB GeForce 9600M GT for users who need more graphical grunt, so very useful for photographers who want to do heavy Photoshop work on the road.

However, not all Mac users are happy with the dropping of FireWire support from all but the Mac book pro. People doing video editing and audio production are particularly unhappy about this, as both of these applications need the performance that fire wire offers over USB2.0