New Apple MacBook Air Laptop Update

Thin FTW: Apple’s New MacBook Air

MacBook Air that hasn’t changed. It comes in the same two sizes, 11.6-inch and 13.3 inch, and it has the same all-flash storage options: 128 GB or 256 GB, plus a 64 GB option for the 11-incher.

Price ranges from $1,000 to $1,600, and there’s still no integrated optical drive, which Apple seems set on writing the obituary for, even if it’s not quite ready to be published. Each model still only measures 0.68 inches in height, and their respective weights are also identical as last year’s: 2.96 pounds for the 13-inch, 2.38 pounds for the 11-inch. And the 13-inch model still comes with a handy SD card slot on the right side.

FaceTime cam built in, two USB 2.0 ports (one on each side),

Battery life has also been improved, and the 13-inch model boasts some seven hours of juice, about 40 percent more than its 11-inch counterpart. Also, if you’re looking to boost your internal storage, recent teardowns have confirmed that the flash chips aren’t soldered down to the logic board. (The RAM? Not so much.)

Size Does Matter With the 11-inch

MacBook Air

1. The screen is a higher resolution at 1,366-by-768 pixels (compared to 1,024-by-768 pixels on most netbooks) to give a sharp, clear picture. It’s also disconcertingly quiet — there’s virtually zero fan noise.

2. But, even though the 11-inch Air is roomier and sexier than a netbook, it still feels claustrophobic over extended periods of use. Staring at a crisp 11-inch screen induces squinting, and the idea of doing any serious work on this note is painful. (When attempting to write this review on the Air, I wound up getting eye-fatigue and switching to a 13-inch MacBook Pro.)

3. Maybe that’s not the point though: The processor is quite slow (1.4-GHz Core 2 Duo), and the Air ships with 2 GB of RAM (4 GB is optional for some extra scrill) so it’s not meant to be a productivity powerhouse. The flash drive somewhat compensates: App launch times are extremely fast (a fraction of a second to load Safari; just 1.5 seconds to open iTunes, for example), and booting into Mac OS X takes just 13 seconds on average