With an eye towards further growth of its phenomenally successful notebook line — by far the most popular variety of Mac — Apple introduced a major update in October that dramatically changes the mobile Mac experience. In its consumer-oriented MacBook line, Apple dropped plastic casings on all but the lowest-Another brick in the wall: The new aluminum MacBook, released in October, was known as the "brick" before release due to its new single-piece construction method. The notebook's body is built by carving out pieces from a single brick of aluminum.end model in favor of new aluminum casings that had previously been reserved for professional models. The new models feature a “precision unibody” construction that combines nearly all of the structural components of previous models into a single piece of machined aluminum. This drastically reduces the complexity of the notebook while simultaneously increasing its durability and aesthetic appeal.

I upgraded my personal black plastic MacBook a few weeks ago to one of the new models — the 2.4 GHz MacBook, specifically — and my impressions have been overwhelmingly positive. The new MacBook is light, solid and generally a pleasure to carry around and to use, weighing in at half a pound less than its predecessor and having nearly identical dimensions — with the exception of a noticeably thinner profile. On a recent trip to California, the computer was easy to operate, even on a cramped airplane. The higher-end MacBook also features a backlit keyboard, which is great for dark conditions such as those on a transcontinental evening flight.

The other major external change to the new MacBook and MacBook Pro is the screen: Apple has installed LED-backlit displays with a glossy glass covering on all the new models. LED backlighting has a number of advantages over previous screen technologies, including near-instant activation and lower power consumption. The new screens also produce a much nicer color than previous models, at least to these untrained eyes. Many long-time users, however, have expressed dismay at the abandonment of matte (i.e. anti-glare) displays on the new MacBooks. I am by no means a graphics professional, but in relatively heavy usage over the last few weeks, I have found that the new screen exhibits no more glare than I was used to on my old MacBook. Generally, the new displays are a wonderful and welcome improvement over the old models, and I don’t think the glare will be a problem for most people.

Apple also created a new button-less, multi-touch trackpad for both of the systems. Made of glass, this new pad has no buttons; instead, the whole pad clicks to serve as a button. This is a new way of navigating the computer, and it takes a bit of getting used to after the previous technology. However, the multi-touch gestures, which have been present in the MacBook Air and later MacBook Pro models for nearly a year now, are very useful; with a swipe, you can clear all the windows from the screen to see the desktop, navigate through open applications, zoom in and out from a photo and do many other actions that are configurable through System Preferences.

The MacBook’s new internals are just as exciting. Apple contracted with graphics company NVIDIA to produce the GeForce 9400M, a new “chipset,” or set of components that assist the CPU in controlling the computer. All previous MacBooks have used integrated chipset/graphics processors from Intel that simply could not perform well on intense graphics tasks like gaming. Compared to the Intel X3100 that was present in plastic MacBook models after mid-2007, Apple claims a five-fold improvement in speed. Additionally, when compared to the discrete GeForce 8600M GT present in the previous-generation MacBook Pro, the new 9400M has 55 percent of the high-end chip’s 3D graphics processing power (up from the Intel chipset’s 11 percent) and 82 percent of its general graphics performance. The new MacBook Pro comes with a discrete 9600M GT graphics processing unit that further improves graphics performance at the expense of battery life; you can toggle between the two processors to suit your needs.

All of these changes mean that computer gaming is now very possible on almost all of Apple’s mobile computers. (In case you are wondering, the MacBook Air also was upgraded to the 9400M, but it operates at a slower speed to prevent overheating in the Air’s smaller form factor.) I tested several popular titles from Valve’s Steam library in Windows via Boot Camp, including last year’s Team Fortress 2, Portal and Half Life 2, and all performed excellently at top settings on my MacBook. I also tested a few of this year’s releases, including Spore in Mac OS and Warhammer Online in Windows, and again I was able to play both at top settings without any difficulties.

If you’re looking for an upgrade, the new aluminum MacBook line offers some truly excellent choices, especially if you are interested in computer games like I am. The new models combine Apple’s signature aesthetic superiority with a serious performance boost that dramatically increases what you can do with your Mac.