January 15th, 2008
Apple introduces MacBook Air
At Macworld 2008, Steve Jobs introduced what he called “the world’s thinnest notebook”: MacBook Air. The sub-notebook uses a special slimmed-down version of the Intel Core 2 Duo, but a full-sized keyboard. And while it doesn’t have an optical drive it can use one wirelessly from a nearby PC or Mac.
Photo credit: REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
The new notebook is 0.16″ thick at its thinnest part, and 0.76″ at its thickest. It’s so small it can fit in a manila envelope. Other features include:
- 13.3″ 1280×800 LED back-lit display
- 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo with 4MB L2 cache
- 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
- 80GB 1.8″ hard drive, or optional 64GB SSD
- Multi-touch trackpad with pinch-zoom
- Lighted keyboard with ambient light sensor
- Built-in camera, microphone, mono speaker
- 1 USB 2.0 port, audio out
- Micro-DVI output (with converter to VGA or DVI)
- 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
- Environmentally friendly mercury-free enclosure and display
- 45 Watt MagSafe power supply
- 37-watt-hour LiPo battery, 5 hours battery life
Since the MacBook Air doesn’t have an optical drive, it comes with software to let it wirelessly use a drive from another machine:
“We have a new feature built into the MBA called Remote Disc. You’ll see in the finder–it will show you all the Macs and PCs that have some special software on them, and you can pick one of those machines and ask to borrow its optical drive. Once they’ve accepted your request you can see what’s on their optical drive–a PC can read a Mac disc and send it wirelessly over to your MBA and it’s just as if you had a local optical drive.”
The new MacBook Air will start at $1799, according to Jobs. Apple is taking pre-orders now, with shipments in two weeks.
Ed Burnette is a professional developer and author of several articles and books about computing including Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform, 2nd Edition. For disclosure of Ed's industry affiliations, click here or to view his full profile click here.
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