14 DAY TRIAL // It's official! Apple's latest laptop, the MacBook Air dubbed "The World's Thinnest Notebook," has started shipping. The same report mentioning the availability of the super slim notebook also informs of a delay for the new AppleTV update. It's "not quite finished", according to the Cupertino-based company, but Apple plans to make the free update available in another week or two.
Going through the MacBook Air's specs again, I couldn't help remembering the huge gap between its price and what it has to offer. Here's what you get for 3 thousand American dollars (the solid state drive option - 64GB), if we leave the I'm-the-thinnest-there-is feature behind.
Leaving aside that Toshiba says its Port?g? R500 is the lightest, the MacBook Air doesn't even sport a user-replaceable battery, but that's ok, 'cause Apple will gladly take it off your hands for 5 working days to do the job for you. You'll need to fork out $129 for the swapping though, if you live in The States, and remember to make a backup of all your files before you proceed. Or, you can just do it yourself, but that's not recommended.
MacBook Air uses a fair amount of RAM (2 GB), while both processor versions are a bit low on clock speed. Apple's latest notebook sports just three measly ports - a jack, a mini DVI video-out port and the USB 2 port. You can only imagine how tired that USB port is going to get, given that an Ethernet port is also a lacking feature with the Air. Adding the lack of an internal optical drive, it pretty much leaves the glossy 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display and the gesture-based oversize trackpad, as features worth spending a buck for.
Now, if we do take the measurements into consideration (0.16-inches at its thinnest point; maximum height of 0.76-inches), $1,799 for the Standard hard drive model (80GB) sounds appealing. Eh, who am I fooling? I want one BADLY!