apple.com(U-WIRE) Apple Inc. said there was “something in the air” last Tuesday at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco as it unveiled a new ultrathin laptop.
In publicizing it’s size to the audience, CEO Steve Jobs placed the new gadget in a manila envelope, calling it “the thinnest notebook in the world.”
Weighing a mere three pounds and retailing for $1,799, the MacBook Air is just 0.16 inches at its thinnest section, with its thickest point at 0.76, even less than the thinnest portions of its nearest competitors.
Unlike other small notebooks, the Air has a 13.3 inch screen and a full-sized keyboard, which is intended to avoid compromises in keyboard quality and monitor visibility, according to Apple’s website.
The trackpad is a significant upgrade from conventional laptops, as Apple has ported the multi-touch feature of the iPhone and the iPod Touch over to the new device. The interface allows for users to scroll through, zoom and drag pictures and text with a simple pinch or swipe of the fingers.
For those concerned with visibility and power consumption, the Air has a backlit keyboard that gives the characters a white hue. The screen has a backlit LED display, which is supposed to provide instant brightness upon opening the laptop.
Unlike older, fluorescent-based screens, the Air’s display will not contain any traces of toxins such as arsenic and mercury, making it more energy efficient and providing for a battery lifespan of up to five hours.
The Air is also the first Apple product to come with an optional Solid State Drive (SSD) for data storage. Unlike hard drives, SSDs work on flash memory and require no moving parts to operate. As a result, the Air will have a notably faster boot-up time and less power consumption than conventional hard drives.
While the SSD-equipped version of the Air will come with a price tag that is almost $1,000 more expensive than the hard drive-based version, the price of SSDs is expected to drop dramatically within the next few years. Apple manufacturers predict the technology will eventually become standard on all computers.Despite the set of innovative features from the Air, the product is not without its drawbacks and inconveniences. In order for Apple to provide a notebook with such narrow specifications, it had to be built without an internal optical disc drive for CDs and DVDs.
This leaves consumers with two options. They can either purchase an external USB disc drive or use a new feature that allows users to wirelessly sync with disc drives from other computers to install and run certain software and media.
The Air lacks a built-in Ethernet port, which relies on a user to have access to some WiFi coverage. With only one USB port, consumers will not be able to use multiple external products simultaneously.
If processing speed is a concern, the Air lags behind its product line counterparts. It contains a miniature version of the Intel Core Duo processor, which will be available in 1.6 or 1.8 GHz versions. In contrast, the slowest, regular-size version for the low-end MacBook runs at 2.0 GHz.
Sei Shiroma, a University of Tampa English student and MacBook owner has his doubts. “I’d be hesitant to buy a laptop without a disc drive, regardless of any approaching technological advances,” he said.
For those who might be hesitant to buy the new notebook, there are already rumors circulating on various technology blogs that Apple will soon include the Air’s multi-touch trackpad with the MacBook Pro. Given the company’s history of allowing new features to trickle down into its overall product line, a broader laptop overhaul might be in the near future.