books

Lusting for MacBook Air

Apple's announcement of its new ultrathin laptop couldn't have come at a better time. After lugging around a huge pack at CES last week and nearly breaking my back, my top wish coming out of the convention was for a truly portable laptop, and I have always used Macs.

I have been trying to be less consumeristic lately (going to CES didn't help that either!) but I have to say that the MacBook Air inspired an instantaneous, primal reflex of consumer lust: Me want that.

Apple's new ad showing the MacBook air emerging from a manila … Read more

Plaxo inches further onto your desktop with new Mac application

It's no shock that contact management site Plaxo has been a fierce advocate of data portability. As a result, it's not particularly surprising that the service continues to expand browser-to-desktop application functions: on Wednesday, the company announced that the latest version of its downloadable Mac client will sync the Plaxo Pulse social network to Apple's Address Book software. This comes in the wake of an announcement that data from Pulse--which aggregates feeds from social media sites like Flickr and Twitter into a common profile--would also sync with Microsoft Outlook.

The new version of Plaxo's Mac client, … Read more

Apple's MacBook Air: A design review

As usual, there were many specific rumors about what Steve Jobs would be announcing at MacWorld Expo this week. Several were reasonably credible, but Apple runs a tight ship; there's really no way to be sure what will come out at any given show.

At the beginning of the year, based on the better rumors and some discounting of existing Mac products, I was pretty sure we'd see four things: new Mac Pro workstations, a refresh of the MacBook Pro line with Blu-ray optical drives and Intel 45nm processors, minor improvements for the iPhone, and a new subnotebook.… Read more

Photos: MacBook Air

I watched The Prestige (starring the always-excellent Christian Bale) this past weekend, so I was looking for the sleight of hand used by Steve Jobs as he pulled the MacBook Air out of that manila envelope at the Moscone Center earlier today. Jobs skipped the Pledge and the Turn, and jumped right to the Prestige (while oddly choosing Paul Otellini over Scarlett Johansson to assist him on stage). Still, it was an excellent display of consumer electronics magic. I've assembled a bunch of images of Apple's newest and thinnest laptop. Take a spin through this Macworld 2008 slide show … Read more

Breaking down Macworld 2008 from all sides

Macworld is a little like the Super Bowl: one big day where everything gets laid out on the table.

So, let's break down Macworld 2008, Super Bowl style. Instead of offense, defense, and special teams, however, I'll take each of the big four themes that Apple CEO Steve Jobs presented, and share my thoughts.

MacBook Air -- I'm not crazy about the name, but this is a nice-looking laptop. Ultraportable laptops are prestige products for both the vendor and the customer; Apple gets to show off what it's capable of designing, while the customer gets to … Read more

Hands-on with the MacBook Air

Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but when he pulled Apple's latest laptop out of a standard inter-office envelope I stood in awe--of both his showmanship and of the laptop's remarkably slim design. Though the MacBook Air is not quite the thinnest laptop ever, it is among the thinnest we've seen (the Fujistu LifeBook Q2010 and Toshiba Portege R500 both measure 0.8 inch thick, but neither tapers to 0.16 inch like the Air).

These data can't really convey the MacBook Air's wow factor--thus the envelope trick. Yet even with that visual I … Read more

MacBook Air missing more than an optical drive

The new MacBook Air is svelte-as-can-be, but it's also missing some key, traditional Mac functionality that might leave some users disappointed or in a lurch. First off, the battery is apparently not user-replaceable. This means you can't swap out batteries to extend operating life, and you'll likely need to seek authorized service to get the battery replaced when it inevitably loses capacity or if it fails altogether.

Since the MacBook Air lacks an optical drive, you can't boot from an inserted DVD like the Mac OS X Leopard install disc unless you purchase the optional, $100 … Read more

Apple releases the "MacBook Air," but will it measure up?

Apple has put the "Wow" in computing, today announcing its MacBook Air. What had been rumored to be a MacBook with wireless broadband built in turned out to be nothing so pedestrian. Apple, the Arsenal of computing, surprised many with an insanely thin new MacBook Air

Intel and Apple started collaborating on the project a year ago and the result is nothing short of spectacular. Whether it's something that you'll actually want to buy is an entirely different question, however. At $1,799.00, it's not cheap, but no one buys excellence for pennies.

Here are some of the more incredible/interesting aspects of the design:

Dimensions: 0.16" to 0.76". 13.3" screen. As demonstrated, it fits within an envelope. It is dramatically thinner than anything else on the market. The option of flash-based memory.… Read more

Apple flies in the MacBook Air

With Macworld kicking off today, that tangled web of rumor, innuendo, and outright fabrication known as the Internet has been abuzz with all kinds of supposedly inside top-secret documentation, downloaded directly from Steve Jobs' frontal lobe.

Naturally, we didn't believe a word of any of the oh-so-fake "leaked" Steve Jobs keynote addresses and product spec sheets, but one area where most of the speculators were at least partially right was in Apple's latest laptop, the MacBook Air.

As was heavily predicted, the new laptop is not quite an ultraportable, but still very small. Mimicking the 13-inch … Read more