It's the MacBook Air

…and the winner is…

[Image: macbook air envelope]

[Image: macbook air package]

Every time MacWorld comes around, the lead-up to the Jobs keynote is a whirlwind of predictions about what swanky new stuff Apple will be announcing to the world at large. And come keynote time it’s impossible to get a page to load at Engadget or TUAW (but Gizmodo was doing alright, so that’s where I ganked my images from).

Apple did not, as far as I can tell, introduce any new iPhone hardware updates. That’s too bad, because I was really hoping they’d have something available with more than 8gb of memory. They did announce the new firmware though, which is something.

The big news is, of course, the MacBook Air. Thin enough to fit in an envelope, apparently rather environmentally friendly, five hours of battery life while you’re just surfing the net (my guess is that with “normal use” you’ll get closer to 3 1/2).

Pretty swanky stuff, and you have the option to include a 64gb solid state drive instead of the normal 80-gb 1.6” hard drive. Also swanky.

I’ll be a little jealous of those who pick one up, but in the end I think it’s still a little underpowered for me.

I like the ultra-portability, and I used to use (still have) a really little, light fujitsu notebook that fit most places and weighed practically nothing, but I often found myself wishing I had a little bit more power and it was worth getting a bigger laptop to have it.

Also, and as a side note, Apple has announced a new UI for AppleTV, but it is still just a glorified trick to get people to buy movies on iTunes (read: no DVR). And rentals? I can now stream movies from Netflix online…