Apple Reveals 11 and 13 Inch MacBook Air Laptops, Available Right Away

The two new Macbook Air laptops

It all started with a question. What would happen if an iPad and a MacBook air were to “hook up”? They’d elope, forget about Apple and live happily ever after away from consumer’s eyes? Nope, not exactly. According to Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs, they’d produce a device that carries the benefits of both. One that has instant on, great battery life, amazing standby time, solid state storage, just like the iPad and manages to be thinner and lighter than all laptops you’ve handled up to this date. From the Macbook Air it would get the stylish and highly appealing laptop-specific design, obviously and the full size keyboard.

When Jobs decided to turn the discussion towards the MacBook Air, we all knew what was going to follow. After all, we’ve had the chance to read about plenty of rumors regarding a 13 inch and a 11 inch MacBook Air and we knew at least one of them was going to see the light of day during yesterday’s event. Quite surprisingly, they were really close to what we expected to see. If I were to keep the description of the new Macbook Airs as short as possible, I’d then just quote Steve Jobs who explained things pretty well: “With its amazing responsiveness and mobility, it will change the way we think about notebooks.” The first Macbook Air already managed to pull this off and is one of the most appealing laptops on the market. Obviously, people couldn’t wait for an even lighter, slimmer and more feature packed Air. Now it’s finally here, in two size options.

It's hard to not be attracted by the extremely slim casing of the new Macbook Air

As previously, Apple decided to rule in favor of an aluminum unibody enclosure. The new MacBook Airs are quite thin, measuring 0.11 inches at the thinnest point and 0.68 inches at the thickest. The 11 inch model weighs 2.3 pounds whereas the 13 inch one weighs 2.9 pounds. Just like the company’s tablet, the iPad, the new Macbook Air laptops were designed from the ground up to rely exclusively on flash storage. The advantages to this are quite easy to spot. Flash storage is about 90 percent smaller and lighter than average hard drives. This allowed Apple to keep the overall size of the laptops down. Additionally, it provides faster data access and is considerably more reliable than conventional hard drives because of a solid state design.

Moving on to the actual tech specs of the two new Apple laptops, the 13.3 inch model features a screen with a 1440 x 900 pixel resolution, SSD storage, 1.86 Ghz or 2.13 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (which by the way can also be found on the older MacBook Air available in stores before this event), GeForce 320m graphics, 2GB of RAM as standard and an estimated battery life of over 7 hours. Apple claims that it tested battery life in conditions that are more “real life-like” so you probably can expect this laptop to last for as long as specified in its specification sheet. The price for the 13.3 inch Macbook Air starts at $1,299 for 128GB SSD and $1,599 for a 256GB SSD.

The 13.3 inch laptop’s smaller brother is also a pretty appealing option. It includes a 11.6 inch display with a 1336 x 768 pixel resolution, 1.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, the same Nvidia GeForce 320m GPU, a solid state drive, 2GB of DDR3 RAM (expandable to 4GB), Apple’s new instant-on capability, FaceTime Camera, 802.11n WiFi and an estimated battery life of up to five hours. The base model featuring a 64GB solid state drive will have a price tag of $999 and you can head up from there. The 128 GB SSD Air for example will cost $1,199.

Taking a closer look at the two new Macbook Air laptops, you can safely say that they’re a sort of iPad with a different design and a keyboard attached. I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing for the time being, but people seem to have fallen in love with them already judging by the endless stream of positive feedback. Both of them come with a clickable trackpad with support for enhanced multitouch. The conclusion is that they appear to be as light, portable and attractive as an iPad, but they carry all the extra kick a full size laptop usually has to offer.

The 11 inch and 13 inch MBAs area already available for purchase. If you’re not especially pleased with Apple for various reasons, this is the one thing absolutely everyone will appreciate. Rather than announcing products one or two months ahead of the shipping date, keeping customers anxiously waiting to buy and use the new products, Apple is simply making them available as soon as they are unveiled. If you like it, just go click buy. As Engadget has managed to find out, they also ship with a software reinstall USB drive, really small as size and with a capacity of about 8GB out of which roughly 7.5GB will be occupied by the OS X and iLife installers.

Since one of the major advantages Apple has over other brands is the way it presents and advertises its products, I’ve also included the new TV ad for the Macbook air. One of the minor inconveniences that future owners will have to deal with is Apple’s apparent “hate” for Flash. Like iOS devices, the new MacBook Air models will come without Adobe Flash Player, even though you’d usually find it pre-loaded on all of Apple’s past computers.11