Moody noted that the upgrade means the new laptops are available well ahead of the important holiday shopping season. He called the MacBooks the "perfect product" for laptop buyers.

The update also means that the gap between upgrades of Apple hardware may be shrinking now that the company is using Intel processors. Intel tends to release updated chips on a faster timetable than was the case with the PowerPC processors used in earlier PowerBooks and iBooks. The first generation of MacBooks was released in May, meaning the time between updates was six months. In the PowerPC era, that time frame was more often nine months and sometimes even longer.

Moody stressed the importance of the MacBook line to Apple. "The MacBook line was our first consumer notebook that used Intel processors. It's helped us drive Apple's notebook share to 10% in the retail market [in the U.S.]"

Compared to the MacBook's predecessor, the iBook, the new models are up to six times faster in certain tasks, Moody said.

More detailed information about the MacBook is available from Apple's Web site.