Apple Reveals 2012 Mac Laptops: How This Helps Us

Today at WWDC, Apple unveiled it's next generation MacBook Pro with it's 2880x1800 resolution "Retina" display. They also bumped all of the current MacBook Air and Pro models to Intel's new Ivy Bridge CPUs. This news is not only exciting for people in need of a new Mac, but also for speculative custom computer builders. The changes represent some of the most ever in one day, and will eventually add a lot of new features and functionality to Mac OS X.

How This Helps Us:
  • Intel's new Ivy Bridge Socket 1155 CPU Support
    • Native Kernel and Power Management
    • Intel HD 4000 Integrated Graphics (60% faster than HD 3000)
  • NVIDIA GeForce 6xx Support
    • Specific device ids TBD
  • Intel USB 3.0 Support
    • Native Ivy Bridge USB 3.0
    • 3rd party chipset support is unknown.
For the next few weeks, all of this will most likely be included only in special hardware specific builds of 10.7.4, and will be unavailable to us. When 10.8 Mountain Lion is officially released in July, the support will be native.
UPDATE: Apple has released an official Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) Software Update 1.0. This download delivers initial support for Ivy Bridge CPUs, USB3, NVIDIA GeForce Kepler GPUs, and HD 4000 integrated graphics. More info to come. Testing is underway.

-tonymacx86 & MacMan

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