Apple MacBook Air: a first look
Published: 16 Jan 2008
As was heavily predicted before its unveiling, Apple's new notebook, called the MacBook Air, is not quite an ultraportable — but it is extremely slim. Retaining the same 13.3in. display as the current MacBook line, it tapers from 1.94cm thick to just 0.4cm. Apple calls it the 'world's thinnest notebook'. Other exceptionally thin notebooks we've seen include the Fujistu Siemens LifeBook Q2010 (1.99-1.82cm) and the Toshiba Portégé R500 (2.55-1.95cm). For more images of the MacBook Air, see our photo gallery.
The MacBook Air includes the usual iSight camera, an LED backlit display, an ambient light sensor and a big touchpad that works with multi-touch gestures, such as rotating a photo by twisting your fingers on the touchpad.
Apple's MacBook Air combines a decent-sized 13.3in. screen with low weight (1.36kg) and exceptional thinness — 1.94cm tapering to just 0.4cm.
As for what's inside this slim 1.36kg notebook, we're looking at a 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, custom-made by Intel to fit into the slim chassis, 2GB of RAM and a choice of either an 80GB standard 1.8in. hard drive or a 64GB SSD drive (which really should be standard for something so forward-looking). Moving up to the SSD drive and faster CPU drives the price up from £1,199 to a whopping £2,028 (inc. VAT).
Bluetooth (2.1+EDR) and 802.11n were expected, but the lack of an optical drive is a surprise — it's a smart space- and power-saving move we expect to see in more ultraportable notebooks. External drives will work, and the Air can connect wirelessly to an optical drive in another nearby computer. Missing features we're less happy about having to live without include any kind of mobile broadband, an SD card slot, FireWire, an onboard Ethernet jack and an ExpressCard slot.
Getting a chance to use a test system, we were extremely pleased with the new multi-touch track pad, which incorporates a range of gesture controls that will be familiar to iPhone users. It's a smart move on Apple's part; not only are the gestures easy to learn, but they're difficult to forget. Writers and students will be pleased as well with the MacBook Air's keyboard, which is full size and similar to that of the standard MacBook. In terms of interaction, the MacBook Air is probably the first sub-1.5kg notebook that hasn't asked users to make some kind of compromise. The MacBook Air is available for preorder now and should ship around the end of January.
The prerelease hype was already huge for Apple's next notebook, and it's hard to say if anything could really live up to it. However, this seems at first glance like a solid addition to the MacBook lineup. However, we'll have to keep waiting for a true ultraportable — something that's been missing from Apple's portfolio for several years.
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