Steve Jobs has a knack for taking everything to the next stage in evolution. His penchant for unveiling the next ‘it’ in tech was on full blast last night at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco.Therein he took wraps off the ‘world’s thinnest notebook’: Apple’s MacBook Air. Ever the crowd pleaser, Jobs took the notebook out from a manila envelope. Needless to say the crowd went berserk with cries of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs.’
As he slid the ultra-slim notebook from the envelope, Jobs claimed:
It’s the world’s thinnest notebook (computer). We went out and looked at all the thin notebooks out there and tried to distill a best-of-breed.
And has Apple delivered a ‘best-of-breed?’ Hell yeah! The MacBook Air weighs at only 1.36 kg (3 pounds) and is just 1.9 cm thick at its thickest. At its thinnest, the laptop is an astonishing 0.4 cm think.
No compromise has been made on the processing power and the MacBook Air is powered by Intel’s 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo chip. Jobs claimed that Intel made the processor 60 per cent thinner to fit inside the slick aluminum-made MacBook Air. A 13-inch LCD that boasts of sensitivity to multi-touch and a full-sized keyboard means that the notebook is easy to use despite being so thin. But all the thinness means that Apple has had to make do without an internal CD/DVD drive. The companies will, instead, supply an external USB powered one for $99.
Here are some of the other specs:
* 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
Shipping starts in February and the device will retail at around $1800. They say ‘you can’t improve perfection.’ MacBook Air reiterates precisely this. Apple has done it, yet again!
