I guess it comes down to what specs you're willing to settle for and at what price. The MacBook is simpler (13" screen, 2.1-2.4 GHz, 1-2 GB memory, 120-250 GB hard drive) and generally cheaper ($1,099-$1,499). Whereas the MacBook Pro is slightly larger and more powerful (15-17" screen, 2.4-2.5 GHz, 2 GB memory, 200-250 GB) and much more expensive ($1,999-$2,799). The performance gap between the two is much smaller than that of the iBook and PowerBook, so it more or less is a matter of personal preference and whether the slight upgrade in performance of the MacBook Pro is worth the extra money. I'm not a graphic designer or anything close, but I use Illustrator and Photoshop fairly frequently on my old PowerBook G4 (1.5 GHz, 1.5 GB memory, 80 GB hard drive) and it manages to still chug along at a pretty decent clip. So the MacBook and MacBook Pro will have no trouble handling those programs.