Original URL: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/14/apple_macbook_air_08/
Apple MacBook Air stays skinny, gains beefier specs
Port array still pathetic
14th October 2008 17:57 GMT
Apple's MacBook Air remains as skinny as ever following today's laptop launch, but buyers now get much better graphics, a faster processor and more storage space.
The original Air's HDD was its key weakness, so the 80GB parallel ATA drive's gone, replaced by a bigger, faster, 120GB SATA unit. The SSD Air is now offers 128GB of raw storage capacity.
Apple MacBook Air: still slim, but with better specs
As per the new 15.4in MacBook Pro (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/14/apple_macbook_pro_08_unveiled/) Apple introduced today, the Air now comes with Nvidia's integrated GeForce 9400M chipset, which integrates a GPU that has five times the performance of the Intel one used before.
The Air gets Intel's latest Core 2 Duo CPUs, both with 6MB of L2 cache, but only marginal increases in clock speed. Still, the new core design should mean they outperform the old models by a fair margin.
Alas Apple did nothing to address the Air's paucity of ports: there's still only one USB connector and a headphone socket. The machine gets the new mini-DisplayPort connector instead of the mini-DVI the old one had.
The two new Air models will continue to retail for $1799/£1299 and $2499/£1799, though they won't ship until early November.
Apple October 2008 Laptop Launch
Apple revamps MacBook as 13in MacBook Pro (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/14/apple_macbook_08/)
Apple MacBook Air stays skinny, gains beefier specs (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/14/apple_macbook_air_08/)
Apple takes wraps off rumour-matching MacBook Pros (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/14/apple_macbook_pro_08_unveiled/)
Blu-ray Disc a 'bag of hurt', says Jobs (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/15/jobs_slams_blu_ray_disc/)