The new drive, a naked mini USB dongle without the usual shielding, is pictured on Apple's MacBook Air product page as among the items included in the box. The new MacBook Air, with screen sizes of 11.6 and 13.3 inches, was introduced Wednesday.
The new USB device eliminates any need for optical media, without taking up storage space on the sold state hard drive as many other PC do with their factory reinstall partition.
Apart from USB 2.0 ports on either side of the unit, the new MacBook Air design uses a conventional MagSafe port for power (using a 45 watt adapter), a MiniDisplay port that supports DVI, Dual-link DVI, HDMI (with audio), and VGA signaling with the use of external adapters, and a standard headphone port (which supports iPhone-style headphones with a remote and integrated mic). There is also an integrated microphone built into the side of the unit.
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That's cool... A restore USB drive included with the new Macbook Air as a standard feature. I call that brilliant, imaginative engineering!
Here is more about the Macbook Air Software Restore Drive from Apple at:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4399
Note: This special USB software restore drive includes Mac OS X and iLife and is READ-ONLY. You CAN NOT write to it!
it’s USB. I was thinking it was SD. I thought I saw an SD slot on the new MBA.
it?s USB. I was thinking it was SD. I thought I saw an SD slot on the new MBA.
Only on the 13" model.
That's cool... A restore USB drive included with the new Macbook Air as a standard feature. I call that brilliant, imaginative engineering!
booting / restoring an OS from a USB / flash device has been done before (e.g., VMware and a few distributions of Linux).
May I be the first to say that the picture makes the restore tool look tiny. If it's as small as it looks, it's bound to be lost pretty damn quickly...