MacBook Air is here

During Macworld 2008 keynote, Steve Jobs made some announcements for the forthcoming Apple products, itunes and some statistics for the previous year.

First of all iTunes will offer from now on the opportunity to rent movies. Movies can be rented for 30 days (playback should be started up to 30 days after the rental) and when you begin watching them you have 24 hours to see the movie once or as many times you want. Movies will be available in iTunes for renting 30 days after their DVD release. Movies from all major studios are featured and HD movies will be available in a while. When you rent a movie, you can watch it on your pc or mac or on your ipod/iphone.

Apple TV is upgraded to Apple TV take 2 and integrates completely with iTunes, offering the ability to rent movies straight from your HDTV. Time Capsule is also a new device that offers back-up solutions to Mac an PC users. Time Capsule features a server hdd and an airport extreme wireless solution, which means that you can backup everything without having to plug any kind of cable. Time capsule is offered in 500GB and 1TB capasities.

Last but not least, Steve Jobs announced a new member in the MacBook family, called MacBook Air (“there is something in the air” was the slogan of Macworld 2008). Macbook Air is extremely thin (0.16″ to 0.76″) and offers an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (1.6 standard and 1.8 Ghz optional), 2GB of RAM (not upgradeable), an isight camera, a touch pad with advanced capabilities similar to the ones for ipod touch and iphone, 13.3″ LED backlight display, 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity. There only one USB port, a DVI port and the MagSafe port for the power cord. MacBook Air is equipped with a 80GB hdd drive as standard. Also there is an option for replacing the standard drive with a 64GB SSD drive (no moving parts) for $1000. There is no DVD combo drive so if you want to uses CDs or DVDs you have to purchase the external one which needs the only-offered USB port (the external combo drive is powered via the usb cable so no power cord is needed). Prices for the new Macbook start at $1700. Although if you want a MacBook Air with the SSD drive and the 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, you have to pay near $3000.

In general -as a geek- I love the design and the portability of the new MacBook. The only problem is that a portable notebook should have the option for manual battery replacement. MacBook (as most Apple products, like ipods and iphone) does not offer that option. Battery (according to Apple) lasts for 5 hours, but with wireless on I think that it should be around 3.5 hours. So as Paul Stamatiou said:

For a notebook so perfectly poised at being the ultimate travel computer, not being able to have spare batteries is a huge turn off.

RAM is also not upgradeable but MacBook Air is an ultra-portable notebook and not a desktop replacement. 2GB are ok for most cases and everyday uses.
More photos from MacBook Air can be found here.