With the curtain raiser of Apple MacBook Air, it’s incredibly thin profile made it stand out in a sea of ultraportables. Since then, with more features and faster performance, it has been dragged down by Windows systems. But Apple MacBook Air 13-inch changed the entire scenario and the mindset of the people. In the latest iteration of the MacBook Air, Apple swilled out the dated Core 2 Duo CPU in favor of an Intel Core i5 processor, a low-voltage model, brought back the backlit keyboard, and added a Thunderbolt bolt port. And to add sugar to the pot, it comes with the recently introduced Mac OS X Lion. With all these most notable updates, the Air 13-inch is on the edge to make a big run in the ultraportable space. It’s all too easy to sound like an Apple fanatic when talking about the Air.
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch has the advantage of being strong and durable; also the all-metal body is the classiest we’ve seen on any computer. It is still a dual-core ULV CPU that is being used, but the MacBook Air is now available with two processors from the latest Intel Core i portfolio, which provides a sizable increase in processor performance. It’s a different story, however, when it comes to the graphics solution. Nvidia’s Geforce 320M has been taken out of service and replaced with the Intel HD Graphics 3000, integrated into the CPU. Indeed there is no chance for MacBook Air to lack in performance. The displays remain the same as the last generation, though what they’re driven by is different as its monitor act as a docking station. In terms of pixels, the 13-inch panel is 16:10 - 1440 × 900. And when it comes to design, this laptop is still amazingly thin, too, measuring 0.11 inches to 0.68 inches at its thickest point. It would be very unlikely if we forget to mention the 4.1 x 3-inch glass touchpad on the 13-inch MacBook Air which simply seconds to none. Apple’s silky-smooth, gigantic, multi-touch surface is a huge part of the new Macs and is put to great use in the latest version of OS X.
Talking in respect of the memory, the 13-inch Airs have 384MB of dedicated DDR3 graphics memory, while the other MacBook Airs have 384MB. The right side of the 13-inch MacBook Air includes a SD card slot along with a USB port and also houses a Thunderbolt port, which provides 20 times the speed of USB 2.0 and works with a new class of peripherals. Considering the battery life of this new star, Apple rates the 50-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery inside the 13-inch MacBook Air for up to 7 hours of wireless web surfing. But it won’t be wrong to say that zero sized figures do have some cons. Therefore, the lack of a delete key might irk some as it would have been ok if Apple would have taken the decision not to include home and end keys, or any of those other navigational buttons that we might find handy in day-to-day use.
But one point that everybody would agree to is that there’s beauty in the balance that Apple has found between styling, performance and battery life. Also when we combine a sleek ultraportable design with a great display and touchpad then nearly double the performance- without sacrificing battery life- we’re definitely left with a winner.
