Apple MacBook Air

Introducing the MacBook Air - 3rd Feb 2008

As the world's thinnest notebook computer, the Apple MacBook Air sets new standards. At its thinnest point it's just 0.16 inches, and at it's widest point, just 0.76 inches. The case is made of sturdy anodized aluminium, and the notebook weighs just 3.0 pounds.

Excellent performance is provided by a 1.6Ghz or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM and 80GB hard drive. You can upgrade to a 64GB solid-state drive which has no moving parts.

Apple MacBook Air has a 13.3" widescreen display, which uses LEDs for backlighting allowing a bright display which at 1280x800 resolution gives the same viewable area as on MacBook.

A full size backlit keyboard has a crisp action and automatically lights up when it detects a drop in ambient light, making the MacBook Air ideal for working in low-light environments such as on a plane or in a conference hall.

An oversize trackpad supports a number of novel Apple gesture techniques, e.g. pinch, swipe and rotate, so you can navigate your apps more efficiently, as first seen on the iPhone.

The Apple MacBook Air is designed to be used wirelessly, and comes with 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1. To allow the extremely thin design, the MacBook Air has shed the optical drive, instead using the novel wireless Remote Disc technology which allows you to wirelessly access the optical drive of another Mac or PC. It is expected that MacBook Air will be used principally without the use of traditional disc media, and users will adopt the new wireless access methods Apple has introduced; instead of watching a DVD people will rent movies wirelessly from the iTunes Store, and instead of backing up to disc, the Apple Time Capsule will be used, which is a combination of 802.11n wireless base station and hard drive (500GB or 1TB), enabling automatic wireless backup, so you never have to think about it again.

The notebook ships with the Mac OS X Leopard operating system and iLife 08. The OS X Leopard operating system provides everything you could want, including the Safari web browser, Apple Mail, Address Book and iCal calendar application, the Time Machine application for effortless automatic backup, iChat for easy to use video chat and Boot Camp which allows you to run Windows applications under XP or Vista. Also included is the iLife suite, which comprises iPhoto for organising and sharing your photos, iMovie for viewing and sharing your video, and iWeb for quickly creating your own compelling websites.

The battery allows 5 hours of wireless web surfing.

Connectivity is via a flip down door which reveals a USB 2.0 port, a headphone jack and a Micro-DVI port (supporting DVI, VGA, composite and S-Video output).

The MacBook Air also has a Built in iSight video camera and microphone for easy video chatting on iChat.