Steve Jobs Announces the MacBook Air at MacWorld

I hope you didn’t buy a new Apple laptop recently. Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air at Macworld today.

The MacBook Air is the “World’s Thinnest Notebook” – even thinner than the Sony TZ, which is 0.8 to 1.2 inches thick. It’s so thin it fits in a manila envelope. Seriously. See the image below! Apple’s goal was to make a high performance 3 pound laptop, with a full size keyboard, and large display.

The MacBook Air is so thin, it only has 4 ports: USB 2.0, Micro-DVI, headphone jack and a MagSafe 45w power adapter plug.

So what did Apple leave out? An optical drive. If you really want one, Apple is selling an optional external USB powered SuperDrive for $99. So how do you install software or get files off of CD/DVD? Apple has a new piece of software called Remote Disc which can be installed on any Mac or PC on your wireless network and will let you borrow that machine’s optical drive.

MacBook Air features:

• Magnetic latch
• 5 hour battery
• multi-touch gesture trackpad
• 13.3-inch widescreen
• LED-backlit display
• built-in iSight for videoconferencing
• full-size keyboard
• 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 2GB RAM standard
• 80GB drive (1.8-inch hard drive. Same as in iPods.)
• 64GB SSD option
• 802.11n standard WiFi (N is the most advanced wireless on the market).
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

You can pre-order the MacBook Air today. Apple starts shipping them in 2 weeks.

In addition to the MacBook Air, Steve Jobs also made the following announcements at MacWorld today:

• Time Capsule – a wireless backup hard drive companion to Time Machine
• iPhone & iPod Touch 1.1.3 software update – adds cell tower and WiFi location triangulation data amoung other things
• iTunes Movie Rentals – ability to rent new movies in HD
• Apple TV Take 2 – new Apple TV software allows you to instantly start watching movies you rent from iTunes

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