After hoisting teaser Macworld Expo banners of "something in the air," it seemed likely that the slogan would be an allusion to wireless networking. Instead, Steve Jobs exhaled the MacBook Air, a new ultra light laptop widely rumored in advance to be the star of the show. Echoing the drama of the iPhone presented last year in a glass capsule, Apple suspended a series of MacBook Air units on a cable stretching from the floor to the ceiling (below) at the show.
Apple security first reprimanded anyone touching the models, but by the end of the day people were casually grabbing and commonly spinning the units. If handling the merchandise is any prediction of sales, the MacBook Air should blow off the shelves in gale force winds. The constant, enraptured pawing made it nearly impossible to capture any shots of the new laptops.
Anticipating rumors commonly speculated about the release of a new slim laptop under the name MacBook mini, but despite its thinness and light weight, there's nothing really mini about the new MacBook Air. It has a full size keyboard that's nearly identical to the existing MacBook and the aluminum keyboards that debuted with the new iMac a few months ago.
The Air also has a full size 13.3" display driven by the same Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor as the MacBook (both share 144 MB DDR2 SDRAM from main memory for the display), which supports external display resolutions up to 1920 x 1200, the native resolution of a 23" Cinema Display. It also supports analog VGA and TV output in composite and S-Video flavors.
The new laptop also has a capable processor slightly slower than the current MacBooks (a Core Duo running at 1.6 or 1.8 GHz versus 2 or 2.2 GHz in the MacBooks, and 2.2 to 2.6 GHz processors available in the MacBook Pro), and 2GB of RAM built in as standard. Unlike the other MacBook models, there is no user serviceable upgrades or replacements for RAM, hard drive, battery, nor an ExpressCard expansion slot.
First Look: Apple's new MacBook Air (with photos and video)