Some Already Had a Hands-On with Apple’s 11-Inch MacBook Air

A person who has had a “working” 11-inch MacBook Air in their possession recently has been eager to share the new information with Engadget. The tech-site, for its part, has been more than eager to share this last minute leak with the entire world.

According to the report, this person had a hands on experience with the new MacBook Air model, albeit just for a few minutes, but did managed to make quite a few observations regarding the new hardware.

It is worth noting that, at this point, Apple’s 11-inch MacBook Air is almost confirmed.

The site reports that their “trusted source” says fans can expect the following specs:

- 11.6-inch display (almost three inches smaller than the current model)
- 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (with a possible 2.33GHz option)
- 2GB of memory as standard (base configuration)
- no optical drive
- Mini DisplayPort, USB, and SD card reader along the left, another USB port and power on the right
- updated trackpad to match that of the new MacBook Pros
- similar dimensions (in terms of thickness) to the current MacBook Air, despite the smaller 11.6-inch display
- the round aluminum power button is gone, while a black power key now sits immediately to the right of a smaller eject key on the MBA's keyboard

Referring to the last-mentioned feature, Engadget notes that such a design decision might support the rumored instant-on capabilities of Apple’s upcoming MacBook Air.

However, the site specifically notes that, because the device was running Mac OS X 10.6.4, their source was not able to confirm whether this functionality is present on the computer.

Besides updated notebooks, Apple is also expected to introduce a new version of their Mac operating system.

Believed to be dubbed “Lion” (due to the artwork in Apple’s invitations for today’s event), Mac OS X 10.7 may only emerge as a developer preview today, while the public release may occur as late as mid-2011.