Apple releases MacBook Air

Apple goes for a win with the new MacBook Air. All I can say is it’s thin, sleek, thin! And surprisingly, it’s cheaper than I expected. Tech specs and pictures after the jump.

That’s 12.8 inches by 8.94 inches with thickness from .16 to .76 and natively supports 1280 by 800 pixels. Weighs only 3 lbs!

Of course since this rig is thinner than its predecessor, it can only fit an 80GB HDD (4200 rpm) compared to older models that go up to 160GB . However, there’s an optional 64GB solid state drive (Flash disk) — really nice.

Now, how fast can they go? Well, they’re actually slower than the older ones too. Comes with Intel Core 2 Duo at 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz. The older model speeds at 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz (and 2.4GHz for the Macbook Pro).

At least, they go with a standard 2GB RAM which lets you avoid that expensive memory upgrade (or maybe they added the extra 1GB cost in the initial price?). And the 5 hours battery life is almost common with all Macbooks.

And oh, it lacks the standard ports – only 1 DVI port, 1 USB port (what???) and 1 audio port. How one can live with only 1 USB port is still a puzzle to me. No phone port, no LAN port. It has Bluetooth 2.0 and WiFi 80.211n.

Price starts at $1,799 for the 1.6GHz/80GB HDD and $3,098 for the 1.8GHz/64GB SSD. Wow, that SSD surely is very expensive.

Update: Comes with an optional $99 external Superdrive. But what if I left it at home or *gasp* lose it somewhere. An external wired LAN port will cost you $29 extra.

Oh, and CrunchGear says it’s beautiful but basically useless.