The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

It was the MacBook Air sub-notebook

The world's thinnest notebook, Apple claims

Macworld Expo For once the rumour mill was right. "There's something in the air," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. And then he hit us with the MacBook Air. It’s aluminium, has black keys, is super, super thin, and Steve held it easily with his fingertips.

Apple MacBook Air

Thinnovation

“It’s the world’s thinnest notebook,” he went on. It has a 13.3in widescreen, LED backlit display that’s instant-on. It also has a built-in iSight camera, a full-sized, back-lit keyboard, and a trackpad with multi-touch gesture support.

Apple MacBook Air

Skinny

The MacBook Air goes from 1.9cm down to 0.4cm at the thin end. It has a length of 32cm, a width of 22.7cm and weighs in at 1.36kg. It’s so thin, it even fits inside a manilla envelope - as Jobs demonstrated.

Apple MacBook Air

Widescreen 13.3in LED-backlit display

The Macbook Air packs a 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed, though a 1.8GHz upgrade will be available too. All Airs come with 2GB of DDR 2 memory as standard. The 1.6GHz model comes with a 4200rpm 80GB hard disk drive, but the faster Air has a 64GB solid-state drive.

The port array runs to a MagSafe link on the right side, and a USB 2.0 port, mini-DVI connector and a headphone socket on the left, all three under a flap. Want an optical drive? That's an extra $99 for an external unit, though the Air can make use of drives fitted into other Macs. The Air ships with adaptor cables with full DVI and VGA ports on the end.

With 802.11n Wi-Fi on for browsing the web, you get five hours of battery life, Jobs claimed. Bluetooth 2.1+EDR is part of the package too. However, the battery is sealed and is not user replaceable.

The a new MBA battery will cost $129. And the installation is free, but you'll still have to hand over your machine to Apple until they can get the new battery installed.

And how much will this lovely laptop set you back? From £1199 in the UK and $1799 in the US, where it's due to ship in two weeks' time. The forecast ship time for the UK is two to three weeks. The 1.8GHz, 64GB SSD model will cost £2028/$3098.

Hmmm. That $3098 equates to £1571 at today's exchange rate. Even allowing for UK sales tax, that's a rum deal for Brits.

Macworld Expo Stories
Apple NAS box ties in to Leopard's Time Machine
It was the MacBook Air sub-notebook
Apple looks to movie rentals to revive Apple TV box
Apple to charge $20 for iPod Touch update

Latest Comments

@aellath

"Honestly, when i see it wherever it looks like illiteracy to me."

Amen :)

Although, I rate it more as showing a level of retardation. I doubt I could ever rate it as high as "illiteracy" :)

0
0

@storng-bare-durid

"@aellath - TLDR. u f4!L"

i can parse the second half, but what the heck does TLDR mean??

Some power users still have a respect for language and don't muck about with leet-speak. Honestly, when i see it wherever it looks like illiteracy to me.

0
0

STOP SAYING IT'S INNOVATIVE

IT'S NOT INNOVATIVE!!!!

There have been loads of thin and light laptops, check out FSC's Q2010 for starters:

Few ports, about 20mm in depth, no optical drive, reasonable sized screen, absolutely stunning. Cost the best part of £3ooo just last year too.

There are few things new here. And the one USB is just a pain in the neck - are some of you that deluded to think users don't want to plug in a mouse AND a USB key at the same time? Or perhaps print from something on an external disk..?! There's no excuse, it should have 2 USB ports at least.

And great, it has wireless, which works really really well with all the routers that require setting up with ethernet cables first.. Getting round that one will be a doddle for first-time users

I'd buy a Sony SZ6 everytime. It takes up pretty much the same amount of space in my bag, I'm not actually going to notice that whole 400g more, it's stylish, has bloody good performance for an ultraportable, I can take another battery with me when I'm travelling and it's made by the same flippin company. No-brainer

0
0

The answer to the battery solution

The answer is one of these Solar powered laptop bags.

As long as you're somewhere that's sunny...

http://www.greenbang.com/2088/solar-powered-laptop-bag-hits-the-streets

0
0

RE That only matters if you're using http, not https.

You obviously don't know much about network security. Https only guarantees that the connection between you and the endpoint is secure. It does not guarantee that the endpoint you are connected to is the one you think it is. Also I rarely need to think about https as far too many people use the same password for everything. You log into a forum, and bingo I have all your passwords as you always use the same one. Not to mention all the sites that only use https for the initial login, then revert to http for everything else. My machine can easily pretend to be yours. MAC spoofing, ARP spoofing, DNS poisoning. And do you really know that you are connected to the starbucks wireless? How do you know that I am not set up next door with a wireless router broadcasting the name starbucks and hijacking all your traffic? How can you trust that https://mybank.com is really taking you to the site and not a spoof site set up on my laptop that my dns is redirecting you to?

0
0

More from The Register

New Lumia 925: This, loyalists, is the BIG ONE you've waited for
Nokia veep drills high-end master plan for El Reg
Review: HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook
All roads lead to Chrome?
US boffin builds 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster
Beowulf cluster built for the price of a single PC
Borked your iDevice? Pay EVEN MORE to have it fixed by Applecare
Or scream at their hapless techies on their forums
Euro PC shipments plummet into bottomless pit of DOOOOM
11th quarter of decline, 20pc drop on last year - Gartner
Report: AT&T dropping Facebook phone after dismal sales
Turns out folks won't buy that for a dollar
Nintendo throws flaming legal barrel at YouTubing fans
All your walk-through vid revenue are belong to us
Which petite model likes a fondle and GETTING WET? Sony's Xperia ZR
Take this new mobe swimming. Just not deep, or for long, OK?
Google adds Atari Easter Egg for Breakout's birthday
Cute game born in Jobsian heart of darkness