Dave Ciccone, from MobilityToday, was quick to jump at the chance to run Apple’s new Intel powered MacBook Pro through it’s paces and it was apparently well worth it…

The best features are the speed and the little magnetic power cable while the real draw—battery life—was kind of a downer. It appears that the real battery life is about 4 hours, down from the six touted on the Apple website. However, this was with full brightness and not much power saving tech turned on, so take that with a grain of salt. Overall, however, the MacBook looks to be just about the best hardware Apple has released thus far.

To read the entire review posted by Mr. Ciccone follow this link.

I’ve just become aware of some good, bad, and interesting news about the MacBook Pro and I wanted to share it with you…

The good news: The CPUs in the new MacBook Pro were just upgraded to 1.83 and 2.0 GHz (up from 1.67 and 1.83 GHz respectively).

The bad news: This will likely delay shipping dates by up to two weeks.

The interesting: For an additional $300, the processor can be further upgraded to 2.16 GHz.

I just got off the phone with the Apple Store and was told that there would be a 2-3 week delay in shipping the 2.16GHz MacBooks. I was also told that my ship date was pushed back to Feb 28 on the existing order. So I went ahead and went for the upgrade. Hopefully the extra shipping on the new faster CPU isn’t in addition to the existing delay. Photoshop won’t work until sometime in March probably anyway, so it’s not a huge problem for me to wait a little longer. At least I can now stop myself from checking the Apple Order Status page countless times a day.

The new computer I don’t even have yet is almost 20% faster than when I first ordered it. That’s not a bad thing at all.

Nullriver Software — best known for their Playstation Portable (PSP) to Mac sync software PSPWare — has introduced Connect360, a utility that helps the Mac share content with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console. Available now as a public beta version, Connect360 costs $10 to register.

The Xbox360 is more than just a game console — it’s also capable of playing music, viewing digital photos and more. Connect360 is a Mac utility that shares iTunes and iPhoto content with your Xbox 360.

Connect360 automatically indexes your iTunes Music Library and your iPhoto Photo Library. It can also automatically detect an Xbox 360 on your home network, regardless of whether it’s connected to a wired Ethernet port or the Xbox 360’s optional WiFi adapter. Once shared, you can navigate your iTunes and iPhoto content using the Xbox 360’s dashboard. A built-in Access Control List (ACL) can limit which Xbox 360’s can connect to your Mac.

Right now, Connect360 is limited to sharing MP3 audio files and JPEG photos. Nullriver said it’s working an automatic conversion layer to support other image and audio formats.

System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later, an Xbox 360 with a network connection, iTunes and iPhoto. Connect360 is offered as a Universal Binary, capable of running natively on PowerPC or Intel-based Macs.

From the outside, Apple’s new MacBook Pro looks suspiciously like a 15-inch aluminum PowerBook G4. Yes, the ports are slightly different, and it’s slightly wider and thinner. But inside, it’s a completely different machine.

Intel’s Core Duo processor gives Apple a combination of speed and energy efficiency that the company never could get from the PowerPC processor family—one of the big reasons why Apple kissed those processors goodbye and made the move to Intel. As a result, the MacBook Pro has the potential to dramatically improve the experience of running a Mac laptop.

I’m hoping to get some “hands-on” time with the new laptop later this month which will be well before I can actually purchase one of my own. Yes, I’m sure the wait to buy one of these beauties will be a long one for a lot of us.

I suggest heading over to the MacWorld website where they’ve posted a MacBook Pro FAQ that covers the laptop in pretty good detail.

I also suggest you check out their Intel Transistion page, where they cover everything you need to know about successfully moving to the new world of Intel powered Macintosh computers.