1/15/2008
Macworld: MacBook Air
I hope you didn't buy a new Apple laptop recently. Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air at Macworld today.
The MacBook Air is the "World's Thinnest Notebook" - even thinner than the Sony TZ, which is 0.8 to 1.2 inches thick. It's so thin it fits in a manila envelope. Seriously. See the image below! Apple's goal was to make a high performance 3 pound laptop, with a full size keyboard, and large display.
The MacBook Air is so thin, it only has 4 ports: USB 2.0, Micro-DVI, headphone jack and a MagSafe 45w power adapter plug.
So what did Apple leave out? An optical drive. If you really want one, Apple is selling an optional external USB powered SuperDrive for $99. So how do you install software or get files off of CD/DVD? Apple has a new piece of software called Remote Disc which can be installed on any Mac or PC on your wireless network and will let you borrow that machine's optical drive.
MacBook Air features:
You can pre-order the MacBook Air today. Apple starts shipping them in 2 weeks.
In addition to the MacBook Air, Steve Jobs also made the following announcements at MacWorld today:
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The MacBook Air is the "World's Thinnest Notebook" - even thinner than the Sony TZ, which is 0.8 to 1.2 inches thick. It's so thin it fits in a manila envelope. Seriously. See the image below! Apple's goal was to make a high performance 3 pound laptop, with a full size keyboard, and large display.
The MacBook Air is so thin, it only has 4 ports: USB 2.0, Micro-DVI, headphone jack and a MagSafe 45w power adapter plug.
So what did Apple leave out? An optical drive. If you really want one, Apple is selling an optional external USB powered SuperDrive for $99. So how do you install software or get files off of CD/DVD? Apple has a new piece of software called Remote Disc which can be installed on any Mac or PC on your wireless network and will let you borrow that machine's optical drive.
MacBook Air features:
- Magnetic latch
- 5 hour battery
- multi-touch gesture trackpad
- 13.3-inch widescreen
- LED-backlit display
- built-in iSight for videoconferencing
- full-size keyboard
- 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
- 2GB RAM standard
- 80GB drive (1.8-inch hard drive. Same as in iPods.)
- 64GB SSD option
- 802.11n standard WiFi (N is the most advanced wireless on the market).
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
You can pre-order the MacBook Air today. Apple starts shipping them in 2 weeks.
In addition to the MacBook Air, Steve Jobs also made the following announcements at MacWorld today:
- Time Capsule - a wireless backup hard drive companion to Time Machine
- iPhone & iPod Touch 1.1.3 software update - adds cell tower and WiFi location triangulation data amoung other things
- iTunes Movie Rentals - ability to rent new movies in HD
- Apple TV Take 2 - new Apple TV software allows you to instantly start watching movies you rent from iTunes
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Labels: macworld
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1:18 PM
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my old boss just bought a macbook the day b4 macworld. bet she feels dumb now
[*] posted by 
: January 15, 2008 9:47 PM
: January 15, 2008 9:47 PM
1 step fowards, 2 steps back. pricing and battery issues worry me.
[*] posted by : January 16, 2008 7:34 AM
: January 16, 2008 7:34 AM
The MacBook Air (and yes I hate the name) is definitely meant to augment a second Mac. I would have taken a thicker case to get a firewire port, more HD space, upgradeable RAM, an ethernet port and removeable battery as long as the weight was about the same. Speaking of the battery, I’m sure there will be an external battery option made by a third party that you can just put on your lap below the Air and has a magsafe connector, these exist already for other types of laptops and have for years. But that is less important to me than the following.
So if it’s meant to be an extention of a primary Mac, why hasn’t Apple release some software to allow us to “sync” our portable mac like we do our iPhone or iPod. I’ve been wanting this for years. My Mac at home holds lots of movies and music and photos and data, say 500 gigs, not even the highest end laptop has a drive this large. But only a small portion of this data do want to use on the train or plane, yet to move music and movies between multiple iTunes libraries is a complete pain in the butt.
So what I want to see from Apple (or a third party) is to treat a computer like an iPod and choose to sync and even “shuffle” a subset of my media, and data, hell, even Applications (I don’t need 2GB of Garage Band loops every day) to my laptop to take around with me.
If something exists that I have missed please let me know, but this is my computing dream.
So if you have a work Mac and a home Mac that you can sync with, and you use the air to watch movies, do a little bit of work and email and web browsing but nothing too hardware hungry, oh no... Looks like the MacBook air just became a really expensive PDA
(back to the drawing board!)
So if it’s meant to be an extention of a primary Mac, why hasn’t Apple release some software to allow us to “sync” our portable mac like we do our iPhone or iPod. I’ve been wanting this for years. My Mac at home holds lots of movies and music and photos and data, say 500 gigs, not even the highest end laptop has a drive this large. But only a small portion of this data do want to use on the train or plane, yet to move music and movies between multiple iTunes libraries is a complete pain in the butt.
So what I want to see from Apple (or a third party) is to treat a computer like an iPod and choose to sync and even “shuffle” a subset of my media, and data, hell, even Applications (I don’t need 2GB of Garage Band loops every day) to my laptop to take around with me.
If something exists that I have missed please let me know, but this is my computing dream.
So if you have a work Mac and a home Mac that you can sync with, and you use the air to watch movies, do a little bit of work and email and web browsing but nothing too hardware hungry, oh no... Looks like the MacBook air just became a really expensive PDA
(back to the drawing board!)
[*] posted by : January 16, 2008 3:20 PM
: January 16, 2008 3:20 PMPost a Comment
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