By far, the biggest news to come out of Macworld Expo so far has been Apple’s announcement of the MacBook Air.  Almost everything about this computer was rumored ahead of time, including the name, but as with most Apple products, knowing about a product is nowhere near the same as actually seeing it in person and using it.  The question on plenty of people’s minds, now that the product is out in the open, is what’s it like?

The MacBook Air certainly lives up to its name.  At only 3 pounds, the Air is certainly light enough to lift and carry around with one hand when the computer is open.  This computer will allow people to walk around and use it at the same time much more easily and readily than other laptops.  And with a full-size 13” screen, you still get the same experience as you would with a different laptop.

But how does it work?  Well, like a Mac.  In case you don’t know already, the Air features a 1.6 or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2 GB of RAM standard.  This gives you plenty of juice for all but the most grueling tasks, including Photoshop, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, or even Mathematica.  However, you may feel constrained by the hard disk capacity.  To shrink the computer to such a small size, Apple has included as standard the same 80 GB, 1.8” hard drive found in the iPod Classic.  The Air can also carry a 64 GB solid-state drive, similar to the iPhone and iPods (sans-Classic), which will offer increased protection against data loss through no moving parts, but the solid-state drive costs an extra $999, currently leaving it open to only the customers who must not have data loss due to hard drive vibration or failure.  However, the future of storage is here, and its name is Air; within the next few years, storage capacities will rise and costs will decrease to make solid-state storage a sustainable technology.

The Air features a standard Macbook keyboard and trackpad with added gesture support.  The new trackpad now supports motions such as rotation, pinching, and flipping.  To show this off, Apple has added support for these motions to iPhoto, letting you rotate an image, pinch to zoom in or out, and scroll horizontally with three fingers to flip back and forth between images.  These gestures, like the two-fingered scrolling gesture before it, are available to any application that adds support for them, which promises some interesting advances in interface design and usability.

The Air features a modified magsafe power connector, shrunken to fit the design of the new device.  It also sports three flip-out ports for headphones, USB, and DVI out.  Sadly, these are the only connectivity options, so if you want to start plugging into the Air, you’ll have to invest in hubs and adaptors.  Apple is already offering some additions, such as a USB Ethernet adaptor, but too many devices can get unwieldy, and you can say goodbye to BookEndz.  This issue is especially prevalent with the Air’s lack of optical drive; while it has a new Remote Disc feature, which allows you to share another computer’s optical drive with the Air, this can be less than ideal if you do not have very good access to another computer’s optical drive.  However, it’s still a very cool feature, and it works great in practice.

With an incredibly thin profile, high amount of power, and safety and security options like solid-state storage, the MacBook Air is a compelling product for professionals on the go.  It will let you carry a full computer with you wherever you go without overly burdening your luggage, and it offers just enough connectivity to be useful in a variety of situations.  The solid-state drive will be very attractive to anybody for whom sudden or continual motions are a concern, as the lack of moving parts makes data storage that much more secure.  And the new gestures will make their way to Apple’s other portables, allowing for much more power and control with the same pad and one button that Apple portables have always had.

Update 1-16-08 2:28 am: Images added