Is the Macbook worth the large premium that Apple charges for it? In short it depends on what you are going for. If you are going for having the thinnest and best looking laptop that exists today then yes it is for you and you would think it is worth it. But if you are interested in a good computing power to weight ratio as well as concerned with price then it is definitely not worth the large price just for a thin laptop. You would be better off with a Macbook pro for example. To explain you could get a Dell XPS M1330 at a similar price to the base Macbook Air and get double the hard drive space on a faster hard drive, A 2.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and for an extra 100 dollars, you could also have double the RAM. So in essence if you are looking for the best bang for the buck then do not go with a Macbook Air but if you are going for looks then this is the thing to buy.
Today at the annual Steve Jobs Keynote to MacWorld he released 4 different things. The main of which being the all new MacBook Air. This is by quite a bit the thinnest laptop i the world at only .76" thick at its thickest point. It is available for preorder now with units shipping in 2 weeks. This is more of a for show computer rather than a powerful one. Although it ha 2GB of RAM and an option for a 64GB Solid State drive, the measly 1.8Ghz processor may feel a little slow to many people. The SSD option is also an extra $1,000 although should perform much better than the 4,200 RMP 80GB Hard Drive that comes standard. In other news he also released a NAS Storage Device to be used with Leopard’s new Time Machine Backup feature. It comes in either 500GB or 1TB Sizes. Also released was the long awaited Itunes Movie Rentals and along with that a redesigned User Interface for the Apple TV as well as a price drop. The Movie Rentals work the same as most in that you have 30 days to start watching the movie after it was purchased and after you have started the movie you have 24 hours to finish it and watch it again. Also released was the Ipod Touch/ Iphone firmware upgrade bringing many different and new features to both devices. (For a full list hit up Engadget.com)
Photo from Engadget.com
As most of you already know Macworld is starting tomorrow at 9AM sharp with Steve Job’s annual keynote. The main rumors going around are the recent postings on different blogs about the new MacBook Air and its possible release tomorrow. The rumors hint at a very small laptop, almost a cross between an unltraportable and a thin and light laptop for it is rumored to not have a disc drive as well as the possibility of not having a wired LAN connection. Which means that the latopt would rely solely on Wi-fi or some other means of wireless communication (WiMax???). The other subject that Jobs will most likely talk about is the upcoming launch of the Iphone/iTouch SDK release in February. Probably a pricing system and the details of the whole operation will be talked about tomorrow. Hopefully this year his talk lives up to the overwhelming amount of hype that his keynote always garners(it usually does).
Photo from Wired.com.