Air cut
Apple has rounded off a busy couple of days with an update of the MacBook Air thin-and-light notebook family.
The headline changes are: Intel Sandy Bridge processors, featuring integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics; Thunderbolt I/O technology, a back-lit keyboard and running the newly-released Mac OS X Lion operating system.
"Portable, affordable and powerful, MacBook Air is the ultimate everyday notebook," said Philip Schiller, Apple's SVP of worldwide product marketing. "MacBook Air features our most advanced technology and is an ideal match for Lion, especially with its new Multi-Touch gestures, full-screen apps, Mission Control and Mac App Store."
As you can see from the quote above, Apple is positioning the new MacBook air as an ‘everyday' notebook. This is presumably as opposed to the previous positioning of the MacBook Air as a high-end, flashy product. The price starts at $999, which translates to £849 over here. The general consensus is that the old, white MacBook is no more.
The 11 inch, 1.6 GHz, Core i5 Air costs £849 with 2 GB memory and 64 GB flash storage, £150 doubles both, and creates the option to upgrade to a Core i7. The 13 inch one starts at £1,099, with a 1.7 GHz Core i5, 4 GB memory and 128 GB flash. Doubling the flash storage will cost you £250, and opens up the Core i7 upgrade option. They're available from tomorrow.
