10:14am: We had a really significant breakthrough that culminated in the Macbook Air.You couldn't build a product as thin, light and strong as the Air with the old way. Rather than start with a thin piece of aluminum, and then add material, we started with thick piece of aluminum and then remove material.
That's how they do the Air's palmrest.
(Showing the milling of the Air's top plate.)
Constantly recycling the cuttings and waste.
Start with a slab that weighs 2.5 lbs. and end up with a .25 pound plate that forms the structure of the Macbook Air. That unibody construction made the Air possible. Obviously, this has relevance beyond the Air. We've been working hard to design new enclosures for new notebooks.
“We also have new graphics on Notebooks."
Nvidia came to us to talk about a new graphics part. It would combine a chipset and graphics processors all in one part for a desktop computer. We said we'd like to use it in a notebook.
10:18am: Nvidia GeForce 9400M
Chipset and GPU on one die. 70% is GPU. 16 parallel graphics cores. 54 Gigaflops. 5 times faster than intel integrated graphics. Call of Duty runs 6.2 times faster, Quake 4 five times faster. 82% as fast as the nvidia chip in the MacBook Pros.
10:20am: So still not the high end option, but big upgrade.
New trackpad. Multi-touch, and glass.
39% larger area. Multi touch. Glass for smooth travel. Entire trackpad is the button. Multi button via software. new four finger gestures.
(No physical button!)
New gestures for expose and app switching.
10:22am: So let's take these technologies and make notebooks.
New MacBook Pro.
Black bezel.
LED backlight.
All connectors on one side.
Aluminum unibody.
Next gen graphics.
Glass trackpad.
Mini Display Port connector. This is going on all our products.
Black keyboard.
The unibody saves us 50% of the weight on the major structural parts.
Going to pass around one of the unibodies.
10:25am: Have people on the aisle to hand them out. Nice stagecraft. Waiting to get it...Teams of 100s of people have worked on this for many months.
10:26am: Just handled it. Super stiff, very light. Really is cool engineering.
(Our row is holding up the process...)
Lights back down.
“You're the first to get your hands on it. We're got the GeForce 9600M GT."
Both chips are in the computer! the 9400M, and the 9600M GT. 5 hours of battery with the 9400, 4 with the 9600. Can switch between them.
10:29am: Superdrive.
Magsafe, ethernet, FW 800, no FW400, 2 USB 2.0 connectors, Mini display, audio in and out (Optical and digital.)
Expresscard 34.
Mini Display Port: new industry standard. Going in everything we make.
First Pro that we offer SSD on. Can access battery and drive.
10:30am 802.11 N BT 2.1
.95 inches thick. Thinnest Pro ever.
2 models.
$1999, 15.4 LED backlit, 2.4 Core 2 Duo, 3 MB, L2 2 GB memory, both graphics chips, 250 GB HD.
Shipping today. Should hit stores starting tomorrow.
Lots of new tech, but we're just as proud of all the things we left out. We're working on leaving out toxic chemicals.
First time we've earned an EPEAT gold environmental rating.
Now, we want to talk about the Air.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
