MacBook Air - Macworld 2008
The big news from this
years Macworld Expo was the
MacBook Air, a super lightweight
super thin notebook. It weighs just 1.36 Kg or
just 3 pounds, for comparison the previous
smallest notebook, the PowerBook 12" weighed 2.1
Kg.
If you travel a lot,
or as my girlfriend says, find MacBooks too heavy for
her lady like arms, then this is the machine for you.
It may not be a super-sub-notebook, but I find it's
the weight more than the size of a notebook that puts
my back out and this way you still have that 13.3
inch widescreen.
It has a couple of unique features, other than the
weight & how thin it is. The trackpad now
supports gesturing, like you'd find on the iPhone,
pinching to zoom, three finger side swipe to go
back and forth on a web page. It also has an
option for a solid state hard drive, 64 GB or a
standard drive at 80 GB.
The Air comes as a 1.6 Ghz £1,199 or an optional 1.8
Ghz £2,028 with 2GB of memory, built in 802.11n wifi.
Behind a cool flap hides the Audio Out, USB 2.0 and
Micro-DVI for external monitor support and of course,
a built in camera. Full specs can be found
here.
What's missing is the optical drive. This reminds me
of when Apple removed the old floppy drive when
introducing the iMac, people got all hot and bothered
about it, but now who uses floppy drives? Apple will
sell you a USB optical drive (or buy a 3rd party
device), but what's clever is, they've introduced
some clever software, Remote Disc, which allows you
to use an optical drive of another PC or Mac, just
as if it were attached to your machine wirelessly.
The whole point of this machine is to go wireless.
Some have complained about the built-in-battery,
probably the same ones who complained about the iPod,
I don't see it as much of an issue when Apple won't
charge to replace it, plus it's bound to have some
third-party battery replacements for those who don't
mind using a screwdriver, just like the iPod. You
just need to think about what you want, and if the
Air ticks all your boxes, it's for you, if not
there's always the MacBook and Pro.
Apple have put together a handy video tour to explain
a lot of the features here.
Update: Reviews of the MacBook Air
The Ars Technica
Review
MacWorld US
MacWorld US - Fitting files
on
MacWorld US - Migrating