The laptop took a new meaning with the newest invention of Apple. It is so thin it fits in a regular manila envelope.
In a speech in front of about 4000 attendees to MacWorld conference
(San Francisco), Steve Jobs showed the latest model of laptops: MacBook
Air.
With the theatrical style that characterizes him, Steve Jobs took out a
regular manila envelope, legal size, and removed a real live Macbook
Air. Jobs claimed he have made a comparison with all the current
thinnest laptops.
The MacBook Air will be available in stores in two weeks and it will
cost $1,799. The device has a slightly wedge-shaped profile. It weighs
about 3 pounds, and sports a thickness of 0.16-0.76 inches. It’s 12.8
inches wide and 8.95 inches deep. The MacBook Air can get about 5 hours
of battery life with wireless networking turned on.
the room service menu in my hotel, the San
Francisco Marriott Courtyard, is the size and weight of Apple's new
commercial notebook, MacBook Air. MacBook Air, Apple's newest,
thinnest, lightest, simplest notebook in Apple history weighs three
pounds. It's 3/4s of an inch at the display hinge (closed), sloping
down aerodynamically to a much narrower snout. You have to hold it and
tumble MacBook Air to experience what a three pound, aerodynamically
inspired notebook feels like, because it'll be a first for you. You
have to imagine carrying MacBook Air everywhere in a slipcase, being
able to whip it out, open it and have it ready for note taking,
research, order entry, voice recording, podcasting, writing or
what-have-you faster than you can jot your first word with that legal
pad and pen in your bag.
Apple got MacBook Air so skinny and
light by removing everything that the majority of mainstream commercial
users don't use when they're not in the office or at home. There is no
wired Ethernet and no FireWire. MacBook Air has just physical I/O
ports: USB 2, audio output and micro-DVI (the latter for connecting to
a digital, VGA or video monitor). These are all mounted on a tiny panel
that flips down from the bottom of the notebook. When the I/O panel is
closed, MacBook Air is nothing but smooth, sloped aluminum skin all the
way around. There are no lumps or access covers to tip you off to
component placement.
Many questions remain that require a
full review to answer. My encounter was with a prototype, so I didn't
get a chance to experience heat or fan noise. The charger is 45 watts,
and the clocked-down chips in smaller packaging is encouraging. I also
didn't get to see how far back the display tilts. I did find that the
microphone is no to the right of the iSight window, though I don't know
if the sound quality is improved. Likewise, I did not audition the
speakers. A test left to run is to use this machine with Bluetooth
stereo headphones. This works on MacBook Pro, but it's buggy. Does
MacBook Air fix it?
MacBook Air's battery is sealed inside.
It offers no external indication of its charge state. Apple's battery
replacement program for MacBook Air is to drop it at any authorized
facility, get it replaced, and get your machine back having been
charged for the cost of the battery alone. I wouldn't expect this swap
to happen while you wait, and I don't know whether Apple will commit to
returning your data intact.
The thin lid encasing the 13.3-inch
glossy display is astonishingly rigid. With so little distance between
the top of the lid and the surface of the display, I felt sure that it
would fail my warp test. I pressed hard on the back of the prototype
MacBook Air's lid. It did not flex, and the display's image did not
distort. It's my feeling that the shape of MacBook Air's case will make
it a tougher travel partner than the typical squarish notebook.There
isn't anything to cave in.
MacBook Air is gives you only what you
need: A keyboard, a 13.3-inch display, 80 GB hard drive, wireless
networking and 2 GB of RAM. The 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU (1.8 is an
option) is clocked slow by modern standards, but it is cooler and more
power efficient than the latest Penryn CPUs. Apple claims that MacBook
Air's battery will last five hours, with Wi-Fi. If that's true, then
it'll run 90 minutes longer than the much heavier MacBook Pro that I
carry. The 45-watt charger makes in-flight and in-car charging cheap
and easy.
