Apple Unveils Super Slim Laptop

CBS NEWS ^ | 1-15-2007

[Cagey]

(AP) Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at the Macworld trade show on Tuesday, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it is opened.

Jobs also confirmed the consumer electronics company's foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections within 30 days after they're released on DVD.

Always a showman, Jobs unwound the string on a standard-sized manila office envelope and slid out the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook computer to coos and peals of laughter from fans at the conference.

At its beefiest, the new computer is .76 inches (1.9 centimeters) thick; at its thinnest, it's .16 inches (0.4 centimeters), he said. It comes standard with an 80-gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade.

The machine doesn't come with a built-in optical drive for reading CDs and DVDs, a feature Jobs says consumers won't miss because they can download movies and music over the Internet and access the optical drives on other PCs and Macs to install new software. They can buy an external drive, however, that will retail for $99 (euro66.51).

Trading in Apple stock was heavy Tuesday, the first day of the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. It fell 5.52 percent to $168.91 at midday.

The new laptop, which has a 13.3-inch (33-centimeter) screen and full-sized laptop keyboard, will cost $1,799 (euro1,208) when it goes on sale in two weeks, though Apple is taking orders now. The company's Web site is already touting the machine. The price is competitive with other laptops in its market segment.

The machine helps fortify Apple's already-sizzling Macintosh product lineup and burnish its polished image as a purveyor of cool.

Apple's Macintosh business hit record sales of 7 million units in the company's fiscal 2007, up more than 30 percent from the previous year.

After hovering for years with a 2 percent to 3 percent share of the personal computer market in the United States, Apple's slice has grown to almost 8 percent, making it the nation's third-largest PC vendor, according to the latest figures from market researcher Gartner Inc.

Other revelations during Jobs' speech reflected the Cupertino-based company's intensifying efforts to push deeper into consumers' living rooms with technologies that blend Internet technology into home entertainment devices.

The movie-rental announcement capped months of speculation that an Apple movie rental service was in the offing. The service launched Tuesday in the United States and will roll out internationally later this year.

Apple will have more than 1,000 movies for online rental through iTunes by the end of February, with prices of $2.99 (euro2.01) for older movies and $3.99 (euro2.68) for new releases. Users can watch instantly over a broadband Internet connection, or download and keep the movie for 30 days while having 24 hours to finish the movie once it's started.

Apple is partnering with 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony on the service, which will work on Macs, Windows-based machines, iPhones, iPods or Apple TV set-top boxes.

Jobs cut the price of Apple TV from $299 (euro201) to $229 (euro154) and announced new software that allows users to order movies through the device and play them directly on their TV sets, eliminating the need to route the content through a personal computer first. The software is free to existing Apple TV customers and will be included in new Apple TV devices shipping in two weeks.

Jobs also unveiled a string of new features for the iPhone, showing how users of the combination iPod-cell phone-Internet surfing device can now pinpoint their location on Web maps, text-message multiple people at once and customize their home screens.

Jobs also said Apple has sold 4 million iPhones during their first 200 days on sale.

The crowd applauded when Jobs demonstrated mapping upgrades to the iPhone. Other features rolling out Tuesday included the ability to switch around icons on the iPhones home screen. Users also can create up to nine home screens.

Jobs also unveiled new software for the iPod Touch music player. New models will have be able to process e-mail and perform new mapping functions.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

That's a good idea.

Still, personally consider the solid state drive option to be more impressive than the thinness of the computer.

[jalisco555]

Suspect many people would want a CD/DVD drive in their laptop and would be willing to have a slightly thicker and heavier one.

There's a new feature that allows you to install software to the Macbook Air using the optical drive of another computer. The installation goes wirelessly from one computer to the other. Mac or PC. So the only reason now to have a DVD drive is to watch movies.

[jalisco555]

Gonna get this for my wife. She wants an ultralite laptop and this is the one.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Interesting. Appreciated.

[CurlyDave]

Suspect many people would want a CD/DVD drive in their laptop and would be willing to have a slightly thicker and heavier one.

You can already buy a MacBook which has the optical drive and is slightly thicker and heavier, not to mention less expensive.

I still remember the floppy disc, and how Apple was the first to drop it from their computers. There were moans and groans from many, but it had been years since I had actually used a floppy disc. Never did miss the fool thing.

[BunnySlippers]

Does anyone know if this also comes in black? Some of the pix in the Apple Gallery have it in black ... but I only see the silver for sale.

[BunnySlippers]

Do not sit on it.

[Spktyr]

And Apple just torpedoed that with the new updated iTunes Movie Store.

There is NO reason to have a DVD in your laptop now.

[rom]

I have no need for such a beast, but I can drool nonetheless!
I can see situations where I’d love to have it, but I can’t justify it.

Hats off to Apple!

[Spktyr]

Yeah, you’re still going to need an optical drive on your desktop (to get your existing collection into digital), but at this point an optical drive built into an ultraportable laptop is pointless.

[jalisco555]

Agreed. The light weight combined with the improved battery life will be much appreciated.

[celtic gal]

I wish they would get the logic board issue in the MacBook Pro and MacBook squared away before coming out with something new. I bought a MacBook Pro last summer and had trouble with random shutdowns...took it in....finally it was the logic board. Had the Apple care so it was fixed but did not want to chance it so I traded it for a different MacBook PRo. and the other day..you guessed it a random shutdown after having it only a month. Not sure I would go Apple again though I do like many things about Apple.

[antiRepublicrat]

Heck, I’ve had keyboards that weighed more than this baby.

I miss those keyboards. A light, rickety keyboard is very annoying. OTOH, this aluminum iMac keyboard is pretty solid too.

[Mr. Jeeves]

I got my hands on it at the show today. It's cool, but not all that much better than its Sony competitors. The 1 TB Time Capsule wireless hard drive is more interesting - and instantly went on my wish list.

[Swordmaker]

Light and thin are always expensive. The only missing feature seems to be an optical drive... a sub thousand dollar laptop will have a LOT more feature missing.

This is not a stripped notebook computer:

---

Size and weight

Height: 0.16-0.76 inch (0.4-1.94 cm)
Width: 12.8 inches (32.5 cm)
Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
Weight: 3.0 pounds (1.36 kg)1

Processor and memory

Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed

800MHz frontside bus
2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM onboard

Storage

80GB 4200-rpm Parallel ATA hard disk drive2
Optional 64GB solid-state drive2
Optional external USB MacBook Air SuperDrive

Environmental status report

MacBook Air embodies Apple’s continuing environmental progress. It consumes the least amount of power of any Mac and is also designed with the following features to reduce environmental impact:

Highly recyclable aluminum enclosure
Mercury-free LCD display with arsenic-free glass
PVC-free internal cables
Largely recyclable, low-volume packaging
Meets ENERGY STAR requirements
MacBook Air received a Silver rating from EPEAT

Display

13.3-inch (diagonal) glossy widescreen TFT LED backlit display with support for millions of colors

Supported resolutions: 1280 by 800 (native), 1152 by 720, 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, 800 by 500, 720 by 480, and 640 by 480 pixels at 16:10 aspect ratio; 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, and 640 by 480 pixels at 4:3 aspect ratio; 720 by 480 pixels at 3:2 aspect ratio

Graphics and video support
Pure digital video output

• DVI output using micro-DVI to DVI adapter (included)
• VGA output using micro-DVI to VGA adapter (included)
• Composite output using micro-DVI to video adapter (optional)
• S-video output using micro-DVI to video adapter (optional)

Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory

Extended desktop and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors

Built-in iSight camera

Input

Built-in full-size keyboard with 78 (U.S.) or 79 (ISO) keys, including 12 function keys, 4 arrow keys (inverted “T” arrangement), and embedded numeric keypad

Backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor for automatic adjustment of keyboard illumination and screen brightness

Solid-state trackpad with multi-touch gesture support for precise cursor control; supports two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag capabilities

Wireless

Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking (based on IEEE 802.11n draft specification); IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatible

Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)

Peripheral connections

Audio
Analog audio output/headphone out (minijack)
Built-in mono speaker
Built-in omnidirectional microphone

Battery and power

Integrated 37-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery

45W MagSafe power adapter with cable management system

MagSafe power adapter port

---

All for $1799... not bad.

[Swordmaker]

Suspect many people would want a CD/DVD drive in their laptop and would be willing to have a slightly thicker and heavier one.

Then buy a Macbook or Macbook Pro. Voila, thicker, heavier notebook with CD/DVD drive... and faster processor.

[Swordmaker]

I wish they would get the logic board issue in the MacBook Pro and MacBook squared away before coming out with something new. I bought a MacBook Pro last summer and had trouble with random shutdowns...took it in....finally it was the logic board. Had the Apple care so it was fixed but did not want to chance it so I traded it for a different MacBook PRo. and the other day..you guessed it a random shutdown after having it only a month. Not sure I would go Apple again though I do like many things about Apple.

I don't know what your problem is but I have had a MacBook Pro for almost a year now and it has never spontaneously shut down. I have clients who have both MBPs and MBs and not one of them has reported a spontaneous shut down.

On the other hand, since Ford had some Model Ts that suffered spontaneous shut downs, they haven't released a new model... but their engineers assure us that as soon as they figure out the Model T problems they will release the Model A...

[Spktyr]

The early MBPs had a problem where they would overheat the processor and shut down. This turned out to be the factory putting too much heatsink grease on the processor. It was quickly remedied, and I haven’t heard of a MBP doing that since.

[Swordmaker]

...too much heatsink grease...

Thanks, I had forgotten that little glitch. Yes, one assembler thought that if a dab was good a gob was better... wrong.

[unixfox]

It's simply amazing how far we have come in a few short years.

I can remember when it took two men to carry a 10 Megabyte drive.

I know, I'm old.