Starting at $999 for the U.S. market and at £849 for the U.K. crowd, the new MacBook Air comes with the technology we had previously expected.
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For more on the new MacBook Air, visit the iGeneration column, where you can find details specifications and further analysis for the education market.
It comes with a 64GB solid state hard drive minimum, which is expandable to 128 and 256GB. It also has 2GB RAM as standard, but is upgradable to 4GB, and includes Thunderbolt I/O technology and a glass multi-touch trackpad.
While the thumbnail to this picture makes the MacBook Air look fat and thick, it is actually incredibly thin -- at less than 0.11" thick at its thinnest point — 0.68" at its thickest.
The updated line of MacBook Air's are in 11" and 13" inch models. Not only does the new MacBook offer vastly greater technology than its predecessor, it also comes pre-installed with Mac OS X Lion.
The MacBook Air has a backlit keyboard, so that users can use the keyboard in the dark.
Apple also released a new version of the Mac mini. The new Mac mini is 7.7-inches square and 1.4-inches thin and comes with new dual-core Intel Core i5 or Intel Core i7 processors, AMD Radeon HD 6630M discrete graphics, Thunderbolt I/O technology, and Mac OS X Lion.
The new Mac mini is available through the Apple Store today and in Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers starting July 21. It starts at $599.
The new Mac mini will come with the new Mac OS X Lion installed. Lion is available from the Mac App Store now, though many have complained that they cannot yet download it through massive demand for the new operating system.
An HDMI port allows you to plug the Mac mini into a big screen TV. Though the Mac mini may be small in size, it offers vastly the same functionality as the desktop iMac version, and that of the MacBook -- in that it is portable and runs Mac OS X.
The new Mac mini has a slot that lets you add memory.
The new Mac mini contains new Thunderbolt technology for its I/O system. Apple claims it is twelve times faster than FireWire 800 and up to twenty times faster than USB 2.0.
Mac OS X Lion Server is also available at around $50 from the Mac App Store -- to allow multiple users on a network with file sharing, designed for businesses and schools.