I just finished watching the Macworld 2008 keynote. The new MacBook Air looks pretty fantastic as a DAW for musicians on the go (with a big budget). Checkout the above video tour of the new MacBook Air (Can't see the video? Use this link).
It comes witheither an Intel Core 2 DUO 1.6GHZ or 1.8GHZ processor.
As you can see from this snapshot of the keynote, the MacBook Air has a 1.8" 80 GB HDD standard. But here is an interesting option - a 64 GB SSD (Solid State Disc). How fantastic would that be for a laptop on stage! According to Macworld, "The hard drive is a Parallel ATA (PATA) model that operates at 4200 RPM." Of course it has USB so you can use faster drives if you work with large samples.
How did they get a Mac in that little package? Here is the mother board.
The laptop has a huge touchpad and supports gestures like "pinch" ala iPhone/iTouch.
All this does come with hefty price tag though. The base price will be $1,799. In the keynote, Jobs indicated that the the Solid State Disc version would be "pricey", but "fast" . How pricey. Well hang on to your hat. According to Cnet, "Moving up to the SSD drive and faster CPU drives the price up from $1,799 to a whopping $3,098".
Apple is taking pre-orders and will ship in the end of January.
If any of you reading this ends up picking one of these up for music production, please leave a comment on this post and let the rest of us know about your experience.
Visit http://www.apple.com/macbookair/ for more info.
Mark Mosher
www.modulatethis.com
