Fly This Ultra-Light: The New MacBook Air

Aerodynamic with First Class Seating for One

A year and a half ago I bought a shiny white Apple MacBook packed with the then cutting-edge Tiger OS X, and have flaunted it ever since. I thought she was sleek and compact....But Apple's newest offering to the computer Gods-the MacBook Air-has turned me green. This ultra-light, ultra-skinny laptop is contoured as elegantly as a swan's wing, and wrapped in tough aluminum skin. But is the $1799 price tag likely to scare off the crowd the MacBook was designed to attract in the first place? Do the new features, juxtaposed with those missing, justify the cost leap?

Since its first appearance a few years ago, the MacBook has been largely marketed to the college set. In fact an annual late summer Apple promotion is the popular Back to School deal-buy a MacBook and you automatically get a free Nano iPod. And for a retail price of $1099 the MacBook has been very worth its salt, a price that could make some parents wince but still cave. But for whom is the MacBook Air-at a cool $700 more--designed? Surely not the off-to-college crowd.

I suggest the new Air will attract The Professionals, the young attorneys and trust fund journal-istas. Designers will still opt for the more powerful, graphically inclined MacBook Pro, secretly wishing it was a skinnier runway model, because the basic MacBook and the Pro are no lightweights.

New and Missing "Air" Features: Do They Bear the Price?

Where the new MacBook Air improves over its predecessors is in its power and grace. The introductory details underscore its new 2 GB of memory, combined with the fast Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a standard in the MacBook.