Apple's Lightest MacBook Air

Basking in the glory of the success of its tablet device iPads and mobile device iPhone, Apple has added some of their features to its computers.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled company's new ultra-light laptop MacBook Air which -- like its popular iPad -- has no hard drive. Also, Apple's popular App Store, available on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, too has come to Macintosh computers.

Introduced in two sizes, the new laptops aim to boost the company's falling share in the PC market. Here's looking inside Apple's just-launched MacBook Air.

Looks

Featuring an all-aluminum unibody design, the new MacBook Air is Apple's lightest laptop ever. The laptop measures 0.11-inches at its thinnest point and 0.68-inches at its thickest, and weighs just 2.3 pounds for the 11-inch model and 2.9 pounds for the 13-inch.

Multi-touch trackpad

Apple Air features a full-sized keyboard for typing as well as the popular glass Multi-Touch trackpad found on Apple’s MacBook Pro. The Multi-Touch trackpad lets users pinch, swipe, or rotate to adjust an image, zoom in on text, or advance through a photo album.

FaceTime camera

Apple is also bringing the FaceTime video chatting to Macs. The feature debuted this year on the iPhone 4 and has since been added to the iPad. The new FaceTime for Mac application, currently in beta, will let users make FaceTime calls over Wi-Fi with anyone who has a Mac, an iPhone 4, or the new iPod touch.

Flash storage

The new generation MacBook Air models use flash drives instead of hard drives. The new MacBook Air is designed completely around flash storage. MacBook Air uses the same solid state storage technology as the iPad.
Apple has done away with CD and DVD drives in the very first edition of its MacBook Air, and in the current models the company ditches the hard disk drive. This, according to Apple, will speed up laptops' boot up time.
The 11-inch MacBook Air comes with 2GB of memory and 64GB/128GB of flash storage. The 13-inch model will pack 2GB of memory and 128GB/256GB of flash storage. The 13-inch MacBook Air also includes an SD card slot.

Processor

Like the 13-inch MacBook Pro, MacBook Air too features the NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor. It gives over 2x performance over the previous-generation MacBook Air. It also packs Intel Core 2 Duo processors.

OS

Air packs the latest version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. The OS includes iTunes, Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, QuickTime, iCal, DVD Player, Photo Booth, Front Row and Xcode Developer Tools.
At the event, Apple also unveiled a new version of Mac operating software. Nicknamed "Lion," it includes an improved "iLife" multimedia suite, its set of programs for managing photos, editing videos and music and doing other tasks.

Battery life

As for the battery, the 11-inch model delivers up to 5 hours of battery life and the 13-inch model promises upto 7 hours. Both have standby time of upto 30 days.

Connectivity

For connectivity, MacBook Air includes Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11n Wi-Fi and 2 USB ports. The laptop also features a Mini DisplayPort that can connect to a 27-inch Apple LED Cinema Display, projector or HDTV.

Mac App Store

Apple will bring a version of its mobile applications store to the Mac. The App Store for the Mac will go live within 90 days, and developers will be able to start submitting apps from next month. They will get 70 per cent of the revenue from sales. The original App Store debuted in 2008 and helped spur sales of the iPhone.
The Apple's App Store houses more than 250,000 apps and has generated over 7 billion downloads.