In the well known Apple style, Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc, has announced at the MacWorld 2008 conference the birth of MacBook Air, which will join the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. MacBook Air, the world's thinnest notebook, is the result of a couple of new innovative technologies.



The design and aesthetics are most appealing and follow the same familiar Apple style, a simple, innovative but practical design. The aluminum chassis hides a 13.3-inch LED backlit display, a full sized keyboard and an innovative touchpad that uses multi-touch technology. The 3.0 pounds notebook has limited peripheral connectivity options, with only one USB port, one Audio Out port and only one Micro-DVI. Those three can be hidden away in MacBook Air's chassis by closing the port hatch located on the side of the notebook. The keyboard isn't as simple as in the case of every other notebook out there and has a built-in backlit key illumination to help those people working in low-light environments.



Thin doesn't mean that the device gives up on all of the other features that are part of the mobility aspect of any notebook, so the MacBook Air has a built-in iSight camera, mono speaker and omnidirectional microphone. One thing you won't find on the new MacBook is an optical drive, but data can be stored in the 80GB provided by the parallel ATA hard disk drive, running at 4200 RPM. An USB external MacBook Air SuperDrive is optional for burning or reading DVD's or CD's. The standard 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor has been custom built so it can fit the tight space in the MacBook. Memory isn't an issue with this MacBook as it ships with a generous built-in 2GB of RAM.



The "Air" tag comes from the wireless capabilities of the MacBook, wireless connection being the only possibility to connect to a LAN or the Internet. The MacBook Air wireless connection is based on the IEEE 802.11n draft standard, that being also compatible with the 802.11a/b/g standards. Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR is also available, thus offering an alternative way of connecting different devices.



The starting price of the MacBook Air is situated at 1799$, and for that you will get Intel Core 2 Duo processor-based notebook with 2 GB of RAM and a Lithium-Polymer battery that will run your Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard for a good 5 hours without the MagSage power adapter connected.