5 Things You Need To Know About Macbook Air

Boris | 11:58 pm | January 17, 2008 | New Laptops

Apple started year 2008 by introducing MacBook Air, the new ultra-thin notebook. Rumors ran wild the weeks before the show, and not surprisingly a lot of them came true. A trademark Apple feature, MacBook Air is recognizable more for what it doesn’t have than what it does.

1. Target Market
All the people who don’t like the new notebook automatically assume that Apple was targeting them and missed horribly. Well, this was not intended to be a mainstream hit. The paper thin laptop is marketed to a specific market, one where weight and portability is of utmost concern.

2. World’s thinnest notebook
MacBook Air is so thin that it fits in a regular post envelope. 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.

3. No User Replaceable Battery, HDD, RAM
Selling devices that are not owner serviceable is now the Apple way, after people tolerated this in the iPod and reluctantly accepted it with the iPhone.

4. No Optical Drive
With MacBook Air you can wirelessly borrow the optical drive from any other computer or rent movies from the iTunes Store. Even Apple haters should appreciate the way Apple introduces new and bold concepts that has the competitors tiptoeing behind.

5. Limited Connectivity
Getting that thin has meant sacrificing connectivity, ports and storage. There is no Ethernet, no Firewire, no express card or PCMCIA slot either and single USB port. What you get is 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0 + ERD connectivity, micro-DVI socket, headphones jack and iSight webcam.

“Thinness” being the major selling point is a doubtful advantage, with the price of over £2000 for a solid state harddrive version, enough to buy seven Asus Eee Pcs for every day of the week. Still, you don’t loose inches overnight, there is some groundbreaking advanced technology inside that fragile body, and it comes with the price. Air might not be a revolution, but it certainly is a remarkable innovation.