Macbook refresh leak seems plausible, if not genuine.

Technology wise, Asians are lucky compared to us North American consumers; seemingly always getting hands on new gear or at least the information on upcoming changes and once again it’s no exception for Apple fans – out of Vietnam there are a few new hints of leaks on the Macbook refresh, being upgraded to a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor and NVIDIA 320M mobile graphics processor.  Sure it’s not a supercomputer setup or part of the i7 hyperthreaded lineup, but everyone knows that the simple Macbook line is more for general public usage compared to the Macbook Pro series.  While it’s nothing supremely spectacular, at least it’s a bit of a power upgrade which shouldn’t end up with the savage beating of a bank account.  I still am somewhat waiting for information on the expected refresh of the Mac Pro lineup, though given the fact they will be most likely using Intel Hexacores that have a thousand lot pricetag of around $999USD, I’m probably not going to end up shelling out $6,000 for one of them.  At least Apple is doing a great job of keeping the MacBook Pro lineup affordable for the masses, and perhaps this upgrade on the lower end of the Apple notebook will help move a few more people towards OSX.

Also over the weekend there was an amusing exchange from a Gawker writer and Steve Jobs regarding some of Apple’s policies and whatnot, the gist of which can be seen here.  Now I have to give Steve a hell of a lot of credit here, as far as I can tell very few (if any) CEOs from multi-billion dollar corporations will sit down on a Friday night and have a discussion in regards to company policies, what has recently happened with stolen prototypes, etc.  I’ve read through the whole thing and do have to admit, that while one side was very heated- Steve remained calm, cool and collected while setting the record straight.  Sure people are getting pissed with Apple saying what can be developed where and by whom; but get over it, Apple is not losing sales over the whole thing, that much is very clear – iPad sales are absolutely through the roof, the refreshed products are leaving shelves at a respectable rate and as far as I’m concerned – Jobs 1, Bloggers 0.