At its “Back to the Mac” press conference, Apple unveiled new 11.6-inch and 13.3 inch MacBook Air laptops. Both models feature instant-on capabilities for super-fast boot-times and flash storage for zippy data access. The 2.3-pound 11.6-inch models feature 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPUs, while the 2.9-pound 13.3-inch models feature 1.86GHz CPUs. The smaller model has five hours of battery life, while the larger model has seven. Both models feature Nvidia 320M GPUs.
Here’s the price breakdown as per Apple’s press conference:
- $999 11.6-inch with 64GB of storage
- $1,199 11.6-inch with 128GB of storage
- $1,299 13.3-inch with 128GB of storage
- $1,599 13.3-inch with 256GB of storage
The 11.6-inch model has an option for a 1.6GHz CPU, while the 13.3-inch model has a 2.13GHz CPU option.
It’s disappointing that the new MacBook Airs use old CPUs, but it’s understandable from a positioning standpoint; the company still wants to sell plenty of its popular 13.3-inch MacBook Pro models and would have killed those sales by placing an i3 CPU in the MacBook Air. Furthermore, these are meant to be thin-and-light models that are all about fast boot times and fast hard drive access, not raw power. Still, it would have been nice to cut video on these babies.
Check out the pictures below and let me know what you think of the new MacBook Airs. Are you drooling for one? Do you think they’re too expensive?
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They look purdy enough, but all my computer purchases right now are directly related to my needs starting up a publishing company. I know I'll need an iPad, but for the computer(s) for my partners and hired help, I can't imagine doing without an optical drive, among other specs. Maybe $999 for a tiny computer on which I can demo software would be acceptable, but I can't see any other rationale for me buying one of these in the near future.
You might not need an iPad with the Mac App Store coming.
Well the iPad factors in more with the music production side of things (I'm an ambitious guy). Ability to use OSC with Logic Pro, record on my MacBook Pro when podcasting and use the iPad if I want to look something up online, etc. Plus the software will have an iOS client in the future, so I'd need it for that as well.
I'm actually glad this thing doesn't have Firewire 800. If it did, I could talk myself into getting one as my "everything" machine for road work and video editing.