MacBook Air Lacks User-replaceable Battery

The lack of a user-replaceable battery in the MacBook Air is already being seen as a substantial flaw in the new notebook's design, but it turns out that Apple will offer a reasonable price for an in-house replacement: $129, or the same amount of a new MacBook Pro battery. Just take your new MacBook Air to the nearest Apple store, or send it in through a mail service, and you're supposed to get it back fairly quickly. The only thing that would make this a major hassle would be if the battery was found to be more susceptible to overheating (it's possible) or if its benchmarks went lower than the expected 5 hrs.

So at this point, the battery issue should be a moot point. While we think that battery accessibility and battery life are two of the most underrated aspects of the consumer electronics business (years of bad cell-phone charging has had some influence over that), the power and portability of this little notebook make the battery expectations quite sensible.

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World's thinnest notebook. MacBook Air.

Amazingly thin. Amazingly full-size.
The thinness of MacBook Air is stirring. But perhaps more impressive, there’s a full-size notebook encased in the 0.16 to 0.76 inch of sleek, sturdy anodized aluminum. And at just 3.0 pounds,1 MacBook Air is more than portable — it’s with you everywhere you go.

compromise display.
The glossy 13.3-inch, widescreen LED backlit MacBook Air display is the same viewable size as the screen on MacBook. The 1280-by-800 resolution gives you vibrant images and rich colors at full brightness the moment you open MacBook Air. So you get full-screen performance with all the benefits of a slim design.

Full-size, full-feature keyboard.
The keyboard is full-size with crisp keys just like the ones on MacBook. But MacBook Air goes further by adding backlit key illumination, making it easy to work in low-light settings such as airplanes and conference halls. A built-in ambient light sensor automatically adjusts keyboard and display brightness for optimal visibility. And with the oversize multi-touch trackpad, it just keeps getting better for fingers.

The brilliance of multi-touch.
MacBook Air includes an oversize trackpad with multi-touch technology. You can pinch, swipe, or rotate to zoom in on text, advance through a photo album, or adjust an image. This gesture-based input so successful on iPhone and iPod touch now comes to MacBook.

A smart LED display.
The backlit LED display allows for an even thinner build. It provides instant full-screen brightness the moment you open MacBook Air. The mercury- and arsenic-free display is also more power efficient, which translates to longer battery life.
Thin is in the details.
The innovative now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t port hatch flips down to reveal (and closes to hide) all the ports you really need: a USB 2.0 port, a headphone jack, and a micro-DVI port that supports DVI, VGA, composite, and S-video output. Even the MagSafe power connection has been reconsidered and slimmed to fit MacBook Air

So thin yet so expansive.
MacBook Air comes with a way-more-than-generous 2GB of RAM built in — ample memory for working with your favorite applications. The 80GB hard drive provides plenty of storage space. And you have the option to upgrade to a 64GB solid-state drive, which has no moving parts for enhanced durability.

Micro. Chip.

MacBook Air performance is as impressive as its form, thanks to its 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. This chip was custom-built to fit within the compact dimensions of MacBook Air.

Built-in iSight camera.

Unlike most other ultraportable notebooks, MacBook Air includes a built-in iSight camera. It’s so smartly integrated, you hardly notice it’s there. The iSight camera and iChat software make video chatting easy anywhere there’s a wireless network.

The battery is slimmer.The performance isn’t.

The MacBook Air battery is our thinnest ever, yet it doesn’t compromise power. You can access the web wirelessly for five full hours.
Without wires, you’re free to go anywhere.

MacBook Air is the notebook that allows for a fully wireless lifestyle. It all starts with the fastest-available, next-generation 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR built in. And that’s just the beginning of the unprecedented wireless capabilities of MacBook Air.

Ahead of the curve.

In redefining thin, MacBook Air has shed something you no longer need: the optical drive. That’s because MacBook Air is built for the wireless world. So instead of watching DVDs, you can rent movies wirelessly from the iTunes Store. And instead of backing up files to a stack of discs, you can back up files wirelessly using Apple’s new Time Capsule.

However, for those times when you still need to install software on MacBook Air from a CD or DVD, a new feature called Remote Disc lets you wirelessly use or “borrow” the optical drive of a Mac or PC in the vicinity. So you can have full access to an optical drive without having to haul one around.
Introducing wireless backup. Time Capsule.

Mac OS X Leopard brought you Time Machine, the built-in backup that automatically copies files to an external drive. And now, Time Capsule — the new hard drive plus Wi-Fi base station — lets you use Time Machine to wirelessly back up your files. It’s effort free and yet another way MacBook Air lets you live and work untethered.

Wireless movie rentals.

With iTunes, you can now rent, download, and watch the latest blockbuster hits as well as classic movies on MacBook Air. So you can have one of the world’s thinnest, lightest cinemas with you wherever you go.