Apple introduced two new Macbook Air laptops last night, with CEO Steve Jobs claiming that his company thinks “[this] is the future of notebooks”.
Both new ultra-lightweight laptops boast similar hardware, eschewing traditional spinning hard drives in favour of flash-based storage.
Apple claims the flash storage used in the new Macbook Air range can be up to two times faster than traditional hard drives, while being 90% smaller and lighter.
Another advantage Jobs pointed out is instant on. The new Macbook Air notebooks share this hardware feature with the iPad tablet: a single switch will instantly power up the device or send it into standby.
Apple claims battery life for the new models to be five hours for the 11.6-inch version and seven hours for the 13.3-inch model. Jobs also pointed out that the battery figures were achieved on a new, more rigorous battery benchmark.
Standby time for both models is 30 days.
Hardware specification for both models feature 802.11n wireless, Intel Core 2 Duo processors and 2GB or 4GB of hardwired RAM. Additionally, the nVidia 320M graphics and stereo speakers are an improvement over the Intel integrated graphics and mono speaker in the outgoing Macbook Air.
The 11.6-inch Macbook Air is available with a 1.4GHz Intel C2D processor, 2GB RAM and either a 64GB or 128GB solid state drive. Pricing is $999 and $1 199, respectively.
Its larger brother, the 13.3-inch model, has a 1.86GHz C2D processor, 2GB RAM and either a 128GB or 256GB SSD. Pricing is $1 299 or $1 599, respectively.
Core Group, the South African Apple distributor, is unable to confirm local availability at this time.
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