MACWORLD.

[spiderpig]

Keynote in progress!!!!!

EDIT @ 2:11am:

OH YES MACBOOK AIR. COME TO MAMA

2:13am : Haha. The engadget blog just broke. XD

QUOTES FROM HEREON ARE FROM ENGADGET.COM!

2:15am :

"What is it? Well, as you know, Apple makes the best notebooks on the planet. The MacBook and the MacBook Pro."

"These are the industry standards. Today we're introducing a third -- The MacBook Air."

"What is the MacBook Air? In a sentence, it's the world's thinnest notebook."

10:10am - an 11 or 12-inch display, they also compromise on the keyboard, they make mini keyboards. They don't run the mas fast as they could. We looked at this and said what do we like? Where can we compromise? The weight's a good target, 3 pounds. But too much compromise to get there.

Less than a full size display, keyboard, and we want to put even more performance in this product. This is that Sony product -- one of the best in the field. This is the macbook Air. 0.76 - 0.16-inches.

10:11am - Unprecedented 0.16-inches -- the thickest part of the Air is still thinner than the thinnest part of the TZ series. It's so thin it fits in a manilla envelope. Let me show it to you now.

He pulls out a manilla envelope. Huge applause.


10:12am - "This is the new Macbook Air, you can get a feel for how thin it is. There it is." Unreal, that's almost invisible from the side

MACBOOK AIR OMG.

10:13am - "It fits inside the evenlope, it's that small. This is what it looks like, isn't that incredible? World's thinnest notebook. Magnetic latch, 13.3-inch widescreen display."

10:14am - "The display is gorgeous -- LED-backlit display, it says power, and instant on the minute you open it. It's got iSight for videoconferencing right out of the box. Flip it down, there's a full-size keyboard. This is the best notebook keyboard we've ever shipped, and it's full-sized. And it's backlit."

10:15am - We've got a very generous trackpad, which is great. We've also built in multi-touch gesture support. We've taken that even further, you'll actually be able to turn on all sorts of new gestures."

"You can double-tap and move the whole window, not just the cursor. When you're in a large photo you can pan around with two fingers. When you want to rotate a photo, just rotate your fingers. We learned in the iPhone and we're putting it in our notebook computers."

"If you want to go between photos, pan right, pan left -- if you want to zoom, pinch in and out. Isn't that great?" Rumbling applause.

10:16am - Pretty amazing. Again, you can see how beautiful and thin this product is. Now, how did we fit a Mac in here? I'm still stunned our engineering team can pull this off. There's three things in here -- battery, hard disk, and electronics. We went to a 1.8-inch hard drive." Same as in iPods. "Ships with 80GB drive, option of 64GB SSD."





10:17am - "They're a little pricey, but they ARE fast. But the real magic is in the electronics, this is a complete mac on this board. What's so special about that? This is how big it is." It's the size of a pencil. "We didn't compromise on performance. It uses the Core 2 Duo, this is a really speedy processor."

10:18am - "We've got a great relationship with Intel -- they're engineering driven, we challenge each other. We said we want the Core 2 Duo, but we need to go to smaller packaging. It sounds easy -- it's not. They invested a lot of engineering to create this for us. The same chip in a package that's 60% smaller -- one of the reasons we can build the MacBook Air. I'd like to say thank you, Intel."

10:19am - "I'd like to invite Otellini on stage..." Paul O gets up there, another appearance. Paul: "About a year ago you challenged us to get the world's best CPU into this machine. When we started this project we didn't think it was possible. What we built for you is the width of a dime, thick as a nickel... it's been a challenge, we sweated over it, and we did what we do best together. Innovate."

Paul gives Steve the chip as a "souvenir." Aw, shucks.

10:20am - "This is AWESOME technology. Thank you Paul, thank you Intel. So that's the electronics -- how we fit a Mac inside the world's thinnest notebook. On one side we have MagSafe -- a smaller 45w power adapter, on the other side we have a door that exposes a USB 2.0 port, Micro-DVI, and a headphone jack."

"And, maybe most importantly, we've built into the most advance wireless... 802.11n, along with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. The latest and greatest in wireless, built to be a wireless machine."

10:21am - "What you're NOT going to find is an optical drive. You can buy this accessory, it's USB powered, it costs just $99, it's very compact. But you know what? We don't think most users will miss the optical drive, or will need the optical drive."



10:22am - What do we normally do with these drives? Play movies, install software, burn CDs... guess what, we have a much better way. We can wirelessly rent movies, we have a much better way than burning CDs -- most of us have iPods in our car. For making backups we have Time Machine and Time Capsule to wirelessly back up our laptops. What about installing software?"

"We're going to do that wirelessly too. We have a new feature built into the MBA called remote disc."

"You'll see in the finder called Remote Disc -- it will show you all the Macs and PCs that have some special software on them, and you can pick one of those machines and ask to borrow its optical drive.

10:23am - "Once they've accepted your request you can see what's on their optical drive -- a PC can read a Mac disc and send it wirelessly over to your MBA and it's just as if you had a local optical drive. It's amazing" Big applause. Well, we'll be damned.

"We don't think users are going to miss THAT." DVD disappears. "We didn't want compromise on battery life -- 5 hours battery life in that TINY little notebook."

10:25am - "A lot of others only get 1.5 hours -- this is phenomenal battery life. 3 pounds, 13.3-inch full size display, full keyboard, multi-touch gestures, 0.16-inch thickness, iSight... 1.6GHz C2D, 2GB RAM standard, 80GB drive, 64GB SSD option, 802.11n standard Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR...

"All these and more in the thinnest notebook in the world -- we are pricing this at $1799."

"Lots of woos, huge applause. We commence shipping MBAs in just TWO weeks. Pre-order today, we're shipping in two weeks."

"The thinnest notebook in the world -- we made an ad. Run the ad!"

10:26am - Manilla envelope... pulling out, that thing is so absurdly thin. Disgusting.

"There's a few things we've done on the environmental side. It's enclosed in a fully aluminum case -- it's easily recycled, highly desirable by recyclers. It's our first mercury and arsenic-free display. All of the circuit boards are bromide and PVC free. We're very happy about that as well... the retail packaging is 50% less volume, this helps a great deal in energy expended in transporting and disposing the materials."

We're very conscious of this. Thank you. The thinnest notebook in the world. And it joins the other two great notebook families -- the MB and the MBP, the best notebook in the industry. And that's the fourth thing I wanted to talk to you about today."

OMG. US$1799. It's pricey, but considering the size of the thing... woah. It's SG$2998 here. :\ Grunts.

I was, initially miffed that there was no optical drive, because I am a fiend in burning CDs/DVDs but if what Jobs says actually works, the whole wireless remote disc system, I am sold. (Still, one more USB port couldn't hurt! I shall have to get a multi-port connector...) But oh, and iSight! 2GB RAM! It all sounds quite lovely! (I might be just basking in MacWorldness now.)

.... I need this laptop. (Actually technically, I do. My laptop has been stolen by my brother and I am laptopless.) And now that I think about it, I don't really need all those extra things that were left out in the MBA. I just need it to work, take notes, etc, when I go to school. And I need it to be light. My bookbag kills me as it is. This, is a dream come true.

It's up for pre-order in the U.S. store! And the Singapore webstore is updating at the moment. I think I'm having an orgasm heere.

EDIT:

Singapore Apple MBA pre-orders up now! I wonder if there will be student discounts...

EDIT: and now the singapore website is down. :\ "taking too long to respond".

EDIT: I quite like the ad


EDIT (NEXT DAY): After sleeping it off, I realized that aside from jaw-dropping good looks and a nice concept, it doesn't really work out for practicality. Sure it's thin, but it compromises on so many other things - the optical drive being the least of them. I mean, dude, I can't replace my own battery? I have to send it in? While I might have the time to send it in to get the battery replaced, others might not have that temporal luxury!

And looking at the price again... It's friggin' sexpensive. SIGH.