Apple MacBook Air

Just been revealed at MacWorld.

Pure sex: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

"Apple today introduced the world’s thinnest notebook: MacBook Air. It measures an unprecedented 0.16 inches at its thinnest point while its maximum height of 0.76 inches is less than the thinnest point on competing notebooks. In addition to a stunning 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, MacBook Air offers a full-size and backlit keyboard, a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing, and a spacious trackpad with multi-touch gesture support, letting users pinch, rotate and swipe. The new notebook is powered by a 1.6 GHz or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache, and it includes as standard features 2GB of memory, an 80GB 1.8-inch hard drive, and the latest 802.11n Wi-Fi technology and Bluetooth 2.1. Starting at just $1,799, MacBook Air begins shipping in two weeks."

 

that looks awsome!!!!!!!!!!!
i want one now!!!!

 

Very Sexy.
Very pricey too.

 

Awesomely so. Looks incredible though, make so many other manufacturers offering look truly awful by comparison.

 

It's priced in line with the Sony Vaio TZ with which it is competing.

 

it's not THAT slim...
teh laptop bottom has a \ / shape, so it looks thinner then what it really is.
Also, CPU is slow and HDD is quiet small. Moreover they introduce a new plug that no one (ok FINE, very few) will be bale to use, mini DVI.
Where is the microphone, Line-in, or second headphone plug?!?!

Also 5 hours for a laptop of this size is fairly low, 7-8 hours is always interested, as after a year the time is cut in half or about.
Moreover, from the specs page, it seams to only have 1 USB port. Only 1!!!
The worst is that inside a hole shape, so now if you don't have a iUSB Key, you can't use that as it won't fit! And lets not talk about a wireless mouse where most receivers are wider.

And to top everything up, your Wireless-n is DRAFT! So next month if a new N standard comes out, or a different standard is established, well you are screwed.

I see failure, all over except, except for maybe for the screen, and the tentative to have a "thin" (in the sense of, not so thin in reality design) laptop

 

Ahh FFS - 1.6GHz dual core is more than you need. It's 45nm Montavena as it has 4MB of cache - your "criticism" of Draft-n is moot because there's already enough draft stuff out and you know it'll work with all future draft-n Apple equipment.

5 Hours is a decent amount given the thickness and size of the battery and it was maintained that it was 5 hours with wifi and blue tooth ON. USB ports can use hubs and it is genuinely very thin - have you seen how thin <2" is?? I've seen and held the TZ and thought that was seriously impressive.

You're just nit-picking for the sake of being pedantic - it's a niche product that's one of a range, it's not meant to be all encompassing. Even I, an Apple nay-sayer, can see that.

 

Yea ok, but for the price you expect to get more, not less.

 

For about the same price, and sacrifice a bit more of this CPU and the lack of keyboard that lights up.
On Dell Canada you can get the Latitude XT, full featured (Bluetooth, XT slice battery, wireless n draft, same display).
It's 12inch, REAL ultra portable computer, same display resolution, same display features, has a nice aluminum look to it, microphone plug, 3USB ports, external DVD burner (USB only powered (as it seams)), multi-touch screen, and baterry-less digitize pen with buttons on it, with several pressure points detection, wired LAN 10/100/1000 Gigabit, 1x 54mm ExpressCard slot, normal VGA port (granted it's not DVI as it should, but at least it's a standard port (so it's even) and S-Video port, integrated SD card reader, firewire, 8.7” x 11.7” x 1” size, 3.57lbs (very close in height and size).

Let's not forget that the Mac Book air fails to have a replaceable battery.
http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+MacB...acks+Userreplaceable+Battery/article10357.htm
So happens after 1-02 years? garbage?

I think Apple should have simply improved their current laptop instead of this, or simply put more effort in this design, and listen to the needs of consumers.

 

For the high-end/corporate business professionals, it's truly perfect as they need portability with reasonable computing power which this mba provides.

The price is nothing for this target market, well done Apple!

 

Wow, I want it.

 

i don't see high-end corporate customers as the market for these. it is made for the same market as the iphone - people who can sacrifice some features and performace for pure style.

 

Does anyone know if the cool new trackpad features will be coming to the older, more boring macbooks in a software update?

 

Nah they won't be, it's a hardware thing. TBH the base model ain't all that expensive compared to the Sony TZ, although it's lacking in some basic things like an optical drive and connectivity. Having said that, it is ridiculously sexy and the multitouch is nice, but I was hoping for something touchscreen . The Dell XT tablets have a multitouch LCD so it'll be interesting to see how they turn out.

 

Replacement is US$129 with free installation.

 

The CPU is plenty fast. It might not be able to feed a high-end graphics card constantly, but that won't be an issue for a laptop. In fact, there are very, very few tasks in real workloads (i.e., not folding@home or super pi) which will even be able to use 100% of a 1.6 GHz Core 2.

The hard drive is fairly small, but if you look around your computer and work out how much space you'd be using without any movies, I suspect you'll find 80GB is more than enough.

Also, they didn't introduce any kind of new plug. Apple has been using Mini DVI in all of their products except the Mac Pro workstations since at least their Intel switch, if not before. Anyone who is buying a Mac has to deal with that. I'm not condoning it, but you can hardly count it as a strike against the Air when all their other products are in the same situation.

Personally, I'd be more concerned about only having one USB port. It might not happen often, but I can think of times when more would be convenient. And come on, even the Eee has more than that.

 

agreed. my cpu throttles down to 1.8 when outside games, and i only have a 60gb system partition. marketing has made people go way overboard with their systems.

 

Yep, my notebook's a 1.66GHz Core Duo, 1GB of RAM and has Intel integrated graphics - plenty powerful enough for photo editing, watching video and doing tasks that most would do on an ultraportable.

 

Speed is all a relative thing, for "power users" (I hate that term) like pretty much everyone here on bit-tech, 1.6 GHz might not be fast enough, but for most people it's perfect. For example, my macbook is getting crippled by all the crap that I've installed on it, but my aunt's identical one still runs like the day she got it. For the market Apple's looking for, the computer is plenty fast.

Why might that be, the current ones have multitouch, no?

 

i think you have that term backwards. the n00bs are the ones whose computers get bogged down with all kinds of crap, and the power users have clean and fast machines.