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Apple starts to produce netbook

21 October 2010 15:46 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA-Economics. Apple has long stated that it has no plans to offer a netbook, instead suggesting that the iPhone or the iPad served the same niche as Windows netbooks, Liliputing reported.

But the truth is, before the first consumer netbooks launched, Apple already had a very netbook-like product: The MacBook Air. Itâ€™s thinner, lighter, and generally smaller than a typical Mac laptop. It doesnâ€™t have an optical disc drive. There were only two things really keeping people from calling it a netbook: The 13.3 inch display and the high price tag. The original MacBook Air cost about $1800.

Steve Jobs today introduced the next generation MacBook Air, which he described as â€œwhat would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up.â€

The new model has a unibody construction, much like like other MacBook laptops. Despite rumors that the new MacBook Air would have an 11.6 inch display, there are actually two models, one with a 13.3 inch display and another with an 11.6 inch screen.

The larger model is 0.68 inches thick at its thickets, and just 0.11 inches thick at its thinnest. It weighs 2.9 pounds. That makes the new model a tiny bit smaller than the original which weighed 3 pounds and measure 0.76â€³ to 0.16â€³ thick.

It has a 1440 x 900 pixel display. It has a full sized keyboard, and a webcam. The laptop still has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chip has also been replaced with an NVIDIA 320M chip.

The new MacBook Air models have solid state storage and no optical disc. Apple says like the iPad, the McBook Air will feature â€œinstant onâ€ capabilities and up to 7 hours of battery life while surfing the web over WiFi, and up to 30 days of standby time.

The 11.6 inch version has a 1366 x 768 pixel display and a 5 hour battery that also offers 30 days of standby time. It weighs just 2.3 pounds.

Both models come with 2GB to 4GB of DDR3 memory. The 11.6 inch model starts at $999 with a 64GB solid state drive, while the 13.3 inch model starts at $1299 with 128GB of storage. Thatâ€™s not exactly netbook money, but itâ€™s a lot better than the pricing for the original MacBook Air.