Apple release new Macbook Air, shows radical new Mac Pro

Apple unveiled their new MacBook Air laptops at WWDC 2013 yesterday and they also gave the press a peak at the updated Mac Pro desktop which is due for release later this year.

As expected, the new Macbook Air laptops are super thin and very light. The 11 inch version is 300 x 192 x 17mm and weighs just over 1 kg (1.08kg). The 13 inch model is the same thickness, but is slightly deeper and wider (325mm x 227mm) and weighs 1.335kg).

The new models have 11 inch and 13 inch LED backlit screens. The 11 inch model has a screen res of 1366×768 pixels and the 13 inch model is 1,440 x 900. Neither model have a retina display which is a little disappointing.

Both of them ship with 1.3ghz dual core Core i5 processors, with a turbo boost up to 2.6ghz. The Air can be expanded up to a 1.7ghz dual core i7, with turbo boost up to 3.3ghz with a 4mb shared L3 cache.

Standard memory configurations are 4gb, expandable up to 8gb. Apple say the flash memory is 45 percent faster than the previous version. 128GB is standard, with extra charges for 256 gb. A 512GB option is also available. Both machines use Intel 5000 graphics, with 4k video output support.

The new Air has a 720p video camera, a backlit keyboard, dual microphones and a multi touch trackpad installed.

The New Macintosh Pro desktop computer was showcased by Phil Schiller, the Senior VP of worldwide marketing at Apple.

He spoke to the crowd saying ‘Can’t innovate anymore, my ass!'.

The new Mac Pro is a completely new design. It is based on Intel Xeon processors with a total up to 12 cores and PCI bandwidth up to 40GB/s. The new memory controller is four channel DDR3 operating at 1.866ghz and delivers up to 60 GB/s memory bandwidth, twice that of the current Mac Pro. It will also ship equipped with a PCI Express flash storage solution.

Apple say the machine is kept cool by building it around a ‘fan cooled central thermal core' – a single piece of aluminum that increases air flow and thermal capacity.

At last the new machine gets USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 1.4, two Firewire 800 ports, two gigabit Ethernet ports and six of Apple's proprietary 20GBps Thunderbolt 2 interfaces. It also has 802.11 ac and Bluetooth 4.0 capability. Apple have included dual AMD FirePro GPU's offering seven teraflops of computational power.

The upcoming model is much smaller than the last revision, measuring only 16.8 cm in diameter and 25 cm high. It is all enclosed inside an aluminum cylinder that can be removed for maintenance and repair.

Kitguru says: No news yet on pricing, but you can be sure it won't be cheap.

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