The MacWorld trade show introduced a new Apple personal computer that is less than 1 inch thick. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new MacBook Air notebook computer, which is the company’s first ultra-thin laptop, featuring a multi-touch track-pad and an internal 80 GB hard drive.
The new MacBook Air is only .76″ thick, and will fit comfortably inside a standard A4 envelope. The new notebook does not come within an inbuilt disk drive, but does have extensive wireless capabilities and can stream both CDs and DVDs from another Mac, as well as initiate live data backups to the Apple Time Capsule, the company’s new wireless hard drive.
Jobs claims that the “Air” is the world’s thinnest notebook computer, and weighing in at approximately 3 pounds, it will have the smallest “footprint” of any Mac or Windows PC laptop.
The price of the new MacBook Air, however, is anything but small. The notebook will go on sale later this month at a retail price of $1799. And though the new notebook does not include a CD or DVD player, Jobs is convinced that users “won’t miss it.” The concept of the “Air” is to be a wireless device which bridges the gap between personal devices such as the iPhone, and more fully featured desktop and laptop computers.
With that in mind, the new notebook won’t be able to play standard DVDs, but it will have easy access to online movie rentals via Apple’s iTunes store. iTunes has recently partnered with all of the major film studios, including 20th Century Fox, Sony, Paramount, Universal, MGM and others to offer instant download movie rentals from the iTunes web site.
Prices for the downloadable movie rentals are reasonable: $2.99 for older films, or $3.99 for new releases. High-definition downloads will also be available for many films for an extra dollar. Apple says that by the end of February more than 1000 different film titles will be available.
And though Apple has been quite successful at teaming up with film studios, they’ve had a bit more difficulty getting network television companies on board. For example, NBC recently pulled out of an agreement with iTunes after a lengthy dispute over program pricing.
20th Century Fox also pulled television programming from the iTunes site, and both NBC and 20th Century Fox have opted to license their programs to start up digital media distributor “Hulu,” a would be contender to iTunes online media throne.
Despite the release of the new MacBook Air and the addition of a new film studios to the iTunes catalog, Wall Street remained unimpressed with the new Apple offerings. Shares of Apple Inc. fell by more than 6% following the MacWorld trade show.
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[...] Notebook computer manufacturers can’t seem to make up their minds which way the market is going. Apple has recently introduced the MacBook “Air” light-weight and wafer-thin laptop — a computer so small it will fit inside a standard A4 envelope. But over on the PC side of things, some manufacturers are going to the other extreme, creating the computer equivalent of rugged four-wheel-drive vehicles. [...]
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