Wednesday 19 June 2013

Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Mid 2013)



By Joel Santo Domingo Road warriors and jet travellers rejoice, we've found a laptop that will last all day and well into the night. The newest Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Mid-2013) lasted an astonishing 15-and-a-half hours on a battery test that makes most current mainstream ultrabooks and ultraportables cough and die after four to six hours. The fact that the system gives up very little if any day-to-day performance is astounding.
This isn't a low-powered slate tablet that gives up computing performance in exchange for battery life. With the latest MacBook Air 13-inch, you have a fully functional ultraportable laptop with extremely long battery life, as it should be. If you need to do real work on a plane, train, or out in the field, get a MacBook Air 13-inch. It's our new Editors' Choice winner for mainstream ultraportable laptops.

Almost physically identical to the previous Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Mid 2012)$949.00 at B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio, the new MacBook Air 13-inch continues on in almost the same chassis as the previous model. The MacBook Air has an all-aluminum construction, tapering from 0.11 inches thick in the front to 0.68 inches in the back. It's essentially the same chassis Apple has been using for the past three years, which is in turn a slightly modified version of the chassis they've been using since 2008. While not necessarily the thinnest laptop on the market anymore, it is still as thin and portable as it ever has been. The side panels house a pair of USB 3.0 ports (one left, one right), a Thunderbolt port (which can be used as a mini-DisplayPort for external monitors), a headset jack, a SDXC card slot, dual microphones and the system's MagSafe 2 power connector. The twin microphones are new, and will help others hear you during FaceTime sessions.
In the future, under OS X Mavericks, the dual mic setup will help the system pick out your voice when you're using voice recognition (and maybe even Siri in the future). MagSafe 2 is the same connector that was introduced with last year's MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina Display$1,479.99 at B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio. The new MacBook Air tips the scales at a svelte 2.91 pounds, which is in the same ballpark as competitors like the Dell XPS 13-MLK$1,249.95 at Amazon (2.96 pounds) and the Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 (2.63 pounds with extended battery).

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