MacBook Air

I was watching a recording of Apple CEO Steve Jobs give his keynote presentation at Macworld 2008 early this morning. The showman that he is, Steve Jobs really took his time to slowly display his latest toy, the MacBook Air, to the impatient crowd who were hanging on to his every word.


First, he teased the crowd with a picture of a large envelope on the projection screen:


Then, he slowly walked to the podium stand and held up a similar envelope. Could this really be it? The world's thinnest notebook? Inside the envelope?


You could hear the people in the audience going oohs and aahs when he unravelled the string and slowly brought out the MacBook Air:


It was really that thin. At its broadest, the MacBook Air is still thinner than the thinnest non-Apple notebook in the market today. Jobs was balancing it on the tips of his fingers. I was thinking to myself: he'd better not drop it, not in front of a big audience. Do you want one??


For all its appeal, the Macbook Air compromises in several areas. From what I can see, there's no optical drive so if you want to watch movies on DVD, you'll have to go wireless to connect to an external DVD-ROM drive. Can be quite a hassle. There's also only one USB port.

But the new features include an oversized trackpad with multi-touch technology that allows you to swipe, pinch and rotate what you see on the screen. Impressive! Aesthetically thin with black keys on a backlit keyboard. So do you still want one??