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Hands-On With the New MacBooks
Paige Philuer writes "Macworld has a hands-on article examining the new MacBook and MacBook Pro — not a quickie look from Tuesday's event, but a lengthy, in-depth look with laptops they actually have in their offices. Some interesting observations: No FireWire on the MacBook; the TrackPad doesn't feel like you're running your finger across a pane of glass, though that's what it is; and switching between graphics cards in the MacBook Pro requires you to log out."
Reader Bourbon contributes three links at CNET related to the new models, too: a positive written review (giving a score of 8/10 to the new MacBook), a video review, and a behind-the-scenes look at how the new models are machined.
That's the difference between Windows and OS X. On Windows (XP anyways, not too sure about the new graphics architecture in Vista) all GUI drawing is handled directly by the CPU. So switching the GPU would just entail having to redraw everything all over again, something that the OS can push through fairly easily.
On MacOS X though, every single window, every little widget you see is directly tied into OpenGL (hence the purty animations without killing your CPU)... it's a bit more involved, since each app is now holding onto oodles of resources tied *directly* to the hardware. Switching your GPU becomes a lot more difficult then, and it looks like Apple has taken the route of simply shutting off your graphics subsystem and rebooting it on a new device.