At the MacWorld keynote address in San Francisco, the inimitable showman Steve Jobs untied the string on a standard manilla interoffice envelope and pulled out a laptop computer. Or technically a MacBook. The new MacBook Air measures in at about 3/4 inch thick at its widest point, and turns on instantly the moment it's opened.
Starting at $1799, the diminutive personal computer is competitive with other comparably featured laptops but can easily balloon up over $3,000 depending on configuration. It comes standard with an 80GB Hard Disc Drive, or you can pay extra to get a 64GB hard drive in a flash memory form which is more impact resistant and energy efficient than a standard spinning magneto-optical drive.
The Macbook Air weighs in at about 3 pounds. with a 13.3" widescreen LCD display with LED backlighting and a full-size backlit keyboard that illuminates automatically when ambient lighting requires it. The Macbook Air also builds on the success of the iPhone incorporating the pinch, grab and swipe gestures from the iPhone and iTouch into the Macbook's integrated touchpad.
Jobs also confirmed that iTunes will begin offering online movie rentals via its iTunes web site and service, with deals inked with six major studios to deliver movie titles for download 30 days after their DVD release. Like Vudu and other movie download boxes and services, you'll download the file to your client machine and have a fixed viewing window before it expires and becomes unplayable. AppleTV, Apple Computers and iPods are the obvious clients but PCs can play too, as long as you have the iTunes application installed.
New release titles will rent for $3.99 on iTunes, older catalog titles for $2.99 and high definition versions will be available for an additional $1 premium.
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