Perhaps not wanting to steal any thunder from the recent iPhone 4S launch and/or iOS 5, Apple has gone and quietly updated its MacBook Pro laptop line with upgraded hardware. We're not talking about a sweeping refresh by any means, but welcome improvements that include faster processors, beefier graphics, and more capacious hard drives, and at the same price points as the pre-upgrade configurations.

The 17-inch MacBook Pro now includes a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, up from a 2.2Ghz Core i7, while the 15-inch model now includes 2.4GHz and 2.2GHz Core i7 options, up from 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz. Finally, the 13-inch model is now selectable in 2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 / 500GB HDD and 2.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 / 750GB HDD configurations, whereas previously it shipped with 2.3GHz Core i5 and 2.7Ghz Core i7 processors and 320GB and 500GB hard drives.


On the graphics front, both the higher end 15-inch model and 17-inch MacBook Pro now boast AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.

Baseline pricing for a MacBook Pro still starts at $1,199 (13-inch) and goes on up to $2,499 (17-inch).