Breath of fresh Air
There have been rumours that a redesigned MacBook Air was on the way for some time, but last night Steve Jobs finally unveiled the company's all new ultrathin laptop.
This time around, the Air will come in a choice of 13.3in or 11.6in variants. The bigger of the two features a 1,440x900px LED-backlit screen, while its little brother will settle for a still impressive 1,366x768px resolution. Remember that the current 13in MacBook and MacBook Pro sport a 1,280x800px display, while you'll have to step up to a 15in Macbook to match the resolution of the new 13in Air.
The new models mark the first major redesign of the laptop since it was launched at the start of 2008 and represent the company's attempts to take the lessons learned from the iPad and apply them to a laptop.
On the inside you'll find an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU running at between 1.4GHz and 2.13GHz, depending on the configuration, 2GB DDR3 and a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 320M GPU. Obviously there's no room for an optical drive and again Apple has chosen not to include an Ethernet port.
However, you will get 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, Mini DisplayPort and a pair of USB ports, as well as an SD card reader on the larger model. As an added bonus, the manufacturer is also throwing in a USB 'recovery key' should you need to reformat the system when there isn't an external DVD drive nearby.
