Jobs reveals tiny new laptop (World's Thinnest)

Source: AP

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop Tuesday, unveiling a tiny personal computer that is less than an inch thick and turns on the moment it's opened.

At the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, Jobs also confirmed the tech giant's foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections soon 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 disbelieving fans at the conference.

At its beefiest, the new computer is .76 inches thick; at its thinnest, it's .16 inches, 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.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080115/ap_on_hi_te/apple_macworld

:P

Source: NPR

It's not an iPhone, but Apple's new ultra-portable computer may spark a flurry of purchases by people ready to update their laptops.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the model Tuesday at the Macworld Expo conference in San Francisco, the same event that brought the announcement of the iPhone last year.

Also on the way from Apple are two new services: the ability to rent downloadable feature films via Apple TV, and Time Capsule, a backup system that provides automatic safety versions of any of the company's computers running on a wireless network.

The company's popular iPhone also got a freshened suite of software, most notably a new messaging system and improved mapping ability. Jobs' presentation included a slideshow that showed Apple with nearly 20 percent of the U.S. smartphone market.

The new laptop, named the MacBook Air, has a 13" LED-backlit screen and is available with either a 64GB solid-state flash drive or a standard 80GB hard drive. The company is betting that the added speed and low power consumption of flash may be enough to offset its comparatively light storage.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18113620

After reading up on the Time Capsule, I think it'll be a choice between the new MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. Time Capsule has a 500 GB hard drive :wow:, and all I'd need after that would be the add on Superdrive. OR..get the iMac, Time Capsule, and an iPod Touch, as the iPod Touch can now do email and Google maps :evilgrin:

Decisions, decsions...

I can't afford Apple products.

Other Macs are much cheaper. Studies have shown that Macs are cheaper over their lifetimes when comparing upkeep of Macs vs Windows based PCs.

for $1099. http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs.html

I have the 2gig Mini for $799. When I started using it, I went from 156 on DU's Folding@home team to 32 in two months. Crunched numbers like crazy.

lowendmac.com

great place to start your research. keeps a running tally of deals as well, too. you're welcome and happy bargain hunting! :7

I was telling them about Macworld today even as Jobs was speaking.

At least for me, there is way too much that is compromised to ever consider having that as my main computer. My normal macbook is plenty small and light for my tastes.

I have an iBook now, but it's too heavy. The really dinky ones offer keyboard challenges due to size. This might be just perfect.

I always know Apple will come out with what I want. Thanks for posting this -- I'm excited!

Comes in handy during PC-Mac showdowns, when you can use it as a knife.

it is a microscopic chip that is implanted in your ear lobe and uses your right eye as a monitor. It doesn't need a keyboard, you just think what you want enter. Built in Iphone and Ipod come as options.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_(novel)

Feed (2002) is a dystopian novel of the postcyberpunk genre by M. T. (Matthew Tobin) Anderson. The story revolves around a teenage boy and his relationship with a girl with a vastly different world perspective. They live within a futuristic world where technology has merged electronics and telecommunications with the human mind, something which plays a major role in the novel. The book is a dark satire about corporate power, consumerism, information technology, and data mining in society.

My husband and I were on the Apple site yesterday, and all it had was a gray screen that said something like "Watch Steve Jobs give a major announcement on Tuesday". So my husband tore off a post-it note, and said, "This is the new iPod - it holds 200 gigs." I can't wait to tell him he was, well, half right. :)

worst computer I have ever owned, repaired multiple times - replaced under warranty and the replacement had the same problem.

I have grave worries about how fragile such a thin thing would be. The effects of torsion on these is going to be enormous. Think about trying to bend or twist a letter vs. trying to bend or twist a brick. Even if we're talking about things made from the same substances (paper or ceramics) the difference is the same.

A lot of people were speculating that they would merge their iPhone gesture software with a screen and make a Mac Tablet. I still think it's coming, just not yet.

Looks like a 3rd party is modding Macs to do this clumsily. But I suspect Apple itself could do much better.

True, not a true tablet PC, but very cool.

"Aside from Remote Disc, the other big new software addition with the MacBook Air is the modifications to the Keyboard and Mouse preference pane to support the new multi-touch enabled trackpad. In our demo, we saw the gestures at work in both iPhoto and Safari, though presumably these are features that third-party developers will be able to add to their applications as well. In Safari, we saw the iPhone’s pinch gesture adapted to allow you to size the text in your browser window up and down. You can also swipe with three fingers to use the browser’s forward and back buttons.

It’s quite a mind-bender to see full QuickTime movies in the System Preferences pane, but that’s the interface Apple has chosen to get across the various gestures the trackpad supports. The more prosaic side of the preference pane collects the gestures by finger: one-finger actions (tap, drag, drag lock), two-finger actions (click, scroll, pinch, rotate, zoom), and one three-finger action (swipe)."

http://www.macworld.com/article/131588/2008/01/macbookair_handson.html

That's going to require handling like it was fine china, and most people aren't able to be that careful. (Including me.) We're going to see massive breakage rates on this model.

I'll stick to my HP. For all its hardware problems in the past couple months, the frame and screen are damned sturdy.