Apple's new 13" MacBook Air unboxing and photo gallery

This week, Apple announced its new line of sliver-thin notebooks, and we're lucky enough to have our hands on one! The MacBook Air is Apple's line of ultralight, ultraportable laptops — they may not be lighter than air, but they're pretty close. The MacBook Air comes in two different sizes, a teensy, incredibly portable 11" and a well-rounded 13" model, if you need a little more screen real estate (we did).

Both come with the just-released Mac OS X Lion and are hewn from a single piece of aluminum. Not much has changed in the design since late 2010, but the Air is still is about as sleek and sexy as they come — even for Apple. And just because these good-looking notebooks are super slim doesn't mean they're not serious computers fully capable of vying for your everyday use. In fact, initial tests have demonstrated that the MacBook Air might very well be Apple's zippiest laptop to date.

Both base versions of the new MacBook Air feature the same svelte design and share these other tech specs in common:

• Intel Core i5 processor
• 2 USB 2.0 ports
• 1 Thunderbold port
• FaceTime camera
• .68" thick

As for differences between the two models, here's the breakdown of the 11.6" MacBook Air:

• 2.38 lb.
• Starts at $999, upgradable for $1,199
• Up to 5 hours of battery life

The 11" MacBook Air starts at $999 for a base model that packs 64GB of storage. To double your storage space, you'll need to pay $200 more, but you'll also get a boost with 2GB of additional RAM. For $150 on top of that, you can upgrade to an Intel Core i7 processor, for even more speed and power.

The 13.3" MacBook Air has a few notable differences as well:

• 2.96 lb.
• Starts at $1299, upgradable for $1,599
• SD card slot
• Up to 7 hours of battery life

The 13.3" MacBook Air starts at a higher price of $1,299, but it features a larger screen, and 4GB of RAM standard. The premium $1,599 version doubles the storage space to 256GB and also offers a processor upgrade to the Intel Core i7 for $100 extra. We're currently testing the base 13" MacBook Air, and if your interest is piqued, reward your eyes with our unboxing photos below!


To compare thickness and size, we stacked the new 13" MacBook Air on top of a late 2008 13" MacBook, and added a 2010 15" MacBook Pro to the bottom of the heap in the last image.

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