New MacBook Air Debuts at Macworld

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New MacBook Air Debuts at Macworld

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Sporting a silvery finish, the MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch
LED-backlit widescreen display that has a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution.
The backlighting saves power and provides "instant on" response from
the moment you turn it on, according to Jobs. The device has a slightly
wedge-shaped profile. It weighs about 3 pounds, and sports a thickness
of 0.16-0.76 inches. It's 12.8 inches wide and 8.95 inches deep.

The MacBook Air also features a built-in iSight webcam and a full
sized MacBook-style black keyboard. The keyboard is backlit, similar to
MacBook Pros, and has an ambient light sensor that automatically
adjusts brightness. The trackpad is also capable of recognizing
multi-touch gestures, similar to using an iPhone or iPod touch. As a
result, the MacBook Air's trackpad is disproportionately large,
compared to the size of trackpads found on the MacBook or MacBook Pro.

The
MacBook Air features a 1.8-inch hard disk drive with 80GB of storage
capacity standard. A 64GB solid-state disk (SSD) drive is an option.
The hard drive is a Parallel ATA (PATA) model that operates at 4200 RPM.

The
laptop is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo chip running at 1.6GHz, with
1.8GHz available as an option. Jobs noted that Intel was willing to
engineer a new version of the Core 2 Duo specifically to Apple's
specifications -- it's 60 percent smaller than others. The chip
operates with 4MB of on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor
speed, and uses an 800MHz frontside bus. 2GB of 667MH DDR2 SDRAM is
also included.

Like the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, the MacBook
Air features a slimmed down MagSafe connector for power. It comes with
a 45 watt power adapter. A flip-down door on one side reveals USB 2.0,
Micro-DVI (to connect an external display) and a headphone jack. The
MacBook Air also includes 802.11n-based wireless networking support and
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

Apple estimates that with wireless networking turned on, the MacBook Air can get about 5 hours of battery life.

No
internal optical drive is included, but Apple will offer a $99 USB
2.0-based add-on SuperDrive for users who need it. For users that opt
not to get the optical drive, Apple is offering a new software feature
on this machine called Remote Disk; it enables you to "borrow" the
optical drive of another Mac or PC on the same network as the MacBook
Air, to use for installing software, for example.

Apple's
frequently been in the crosshairs of environmental group Greenpeace in
recent years. Jobs offered information about the environmental goals
behind the MacBook Air -- it has a fully recyclable aluminum case, and
is "the first" to have a mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass.
All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free, and the retail
packaging uses 56 percent less material than the MacBook packaging.

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