Source:

Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop overnight, unveiling a tiny personal computer that is less than 2.5cm thick and turns on the moment it is opened.

At the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, Jobs also confirmed the tech giant's foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed internet connections soon after they are released on DVD.

Always a showman, Jobs unwound the string on a standard-sized manila office envelope and slid out the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook computer to coos and peals of laughter from disbelieving fans at the conference.

At its beefiest, the new computer is 1.9 m thick; at its thinnest, 0.4 cm, he said. It comes standard with an 80 gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade.

The movie rental revelation capped months of speculation that an Apple movie rental service was in the offing. The service launched in the United States today and will roll out internationally later this year...

Apple will have more than 1000 movies for online rental through iTunes by the end of February, with prices of $US2.99 ($3.33) for older movies and $US3.99 for new releases. Users can watch instantly over a broadband internet connection, or download and keep the movie for 30 days while having 24 hours to finish the movie once it's started.

Movie rentals are cool but I'm not actually 100% happy with the new Air Macbook it just doesn't seen "pretty" enough to be Apple, and the fact that it has no DVD drive really annoys me(though they were also the first to drop the floppy drive & that worked out well for them)...

Not that pretty, but all I can say is, how handy would it be to carry that around!!

That's not pretty, it's beautiful. It's convenience personified.

I want to see it in person

i love mac's............................

Beautiful but that's all it is - an ultraportable. It is not incredibly functional at all, you compromise on performance, it is designed to support your main computer at home and is mainly designed for presentations and short business trips/uni notes. I would defs recommend the macbook pro, the performance is amazing! Especially compared to the Air. Apple is releasing the new generation of these macbook pros in a few weeks, with double battery life. xx

It's the design of the Pros that prevents me from getting one, I find them so lacklustre in comparison to the MacBook.

Really? I thought the screen on the pro was much nicer...brighter?

I hate the macbook screen, i have one and it's so small...