Price cuts, spec boosts for MacBooks

Addressing Microsoft’s allegations of costliness, Apple slashed the prices on its line of MacBook laptops and made them more powerful.

The MacBook Air saw the most dramatic price cut of them all, with the solid state drive version falling from $2,499 to $1,799. Additionally, the computer’s processor was bumped up to a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo. The hard drive-equipped MacBook Air was one of three computers whose prices fell $300, now selling for $1,499.

MacBook Pros in the 17-inch and 15-inch varieties will start at $2,499 and $1,699, respectively. Notably, the smaller laptop drops an ExpressCard slot in exchange for SD. It also sports a new battery that lasts up to seven hours and a 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The 17-inch MacBook Pro gets a 2.8GHz CPU and 500GB HDD, but no SD slot.

Apple also gave “Pro” status to its 13-inch MacBook. Starting at $1,199 — $100 less than before — the low-end laptop includes a 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo processor with 2 GB of DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M graphics, and a 160 GB HDD.

Enough number soup for you? The point is, Apple may be trying to claim back some of the perceived value it lost thanks to Microsoft’s recent ad campaigns, which tasked seemingly random consumers with finding a laptop under a set price. Because Apple hasn’t broke the magical $1,000 barrier, Microsoft will probably still push this value angle in its marketing, and Apple will continue to argue that its computers are worth every penny.

But as anyone who isn’t biased in either direction knows, different strokes for different folks. It’s hard to predict which way fence-sitters will go, because so many personal factors go into a computer purchase, but If you were already in the market for a Mac, there’s no denying that now’s a great time to buy.