Steve Jobs' Smoke and Mirrors on 13'' MBP's CPU

The new MacBook Pros, released earlier this week, which help boost Apple's 'professional' line of laptops up to the modern Intel Nehalem-based Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs… except for the 13-inch version. While the 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros were updated with the latest from Intel, the 13-inch MacBook Pro got refreshed with a brand new chipset that included a custom integrated GPU from Nvidia and got stuck with the same sort of Core 2 Duo that it had the previous two generations.

So what's up with that? That's what 'DJ' wanted to know why the 13-inch MacBook Pro didn't get the same Core i5 treatment, so he emailed Steve Jobs about it – and guess what, the Apple CEO responded.

"Far faster graphics and 10 hour battery trump 10-20% faster CPU," Jobs responded.

Another report notes that Steve Jobs gave the following response: "We chose killer graphics plus 10 hour battery life over a very small CPU speed increase. Users will see far more performance boost from the speedy graphics."

While we do recognize that having a fast GPU is critical, especially with the GPGPU thing coming into fruition, there are a few inconsistencies in Apple's messages to consumers.

First of all, Steve Jobs says that keeping the 13-inch MacBook Pro on a Core 2 Duo instead of a Core i3/i5/i7 is only a loss of a CPU that's between 10 to 20 percent faster, which Steve Jobs characterized as "a very small CPU speed increase." But in Apple's own press release, it wrote, "The new 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models are up to 50 percent faster than the previous systems," which have been confirmed in early benchmark comparisons. Those previous systems were running Core 2 Duo chips too, not clocked at around the same speeds that the latest MacBook Pro 13.

Of course, Jobs in his mind could be comparing the new MacBook Pro's Core 2 Duo with a Core i3 -- and in some benchmarks the Core i3 may outpace the Core 2 Duo by only 20 percent or less -- but he's still using a different sort of metric where he downplays the need for a new CPU in the 13-inch model as the company line lauds the massive gains in the 15- and 17-inchers.

Another inconsistency, though it could just be misinterpretation or the enthusiasm for his own products, is when Steve Jobs characterizes the graphics as "killer" and "far faster." While the new 320M is indeed up to 80 percent faster than the old 9400M, it's no more killer or faster than the superior 330M that's inside the 15- and 17-inch laptops.

There is one thing that's better and improved on the 13-inch over its bigger brothers, and that's the highly impressive 10-hour battery life, which is no doubt helped by the 320M being more 40 percent more energy efficient over the previous IGP.

There's the possibility that Apple and Nvidia wouldn't have been able to fit the discrete graphics inside the 13-inch MacBook Pro, leading Jobs to say that it's one-or-the-other, but we're inclined to believe that it comes down to a cost/profit margin issue and keeping the $1199 price.