Apple has done it again. This time, MacBook Air has gotten even thinner, making it the thinnest notebook Apple has made so far. At well under an inch at its thickest point, the Air offers a thin design coupled with an extremely lightweight package for a notebook that has the same basic layout as the standard MacBook.

The design of the Air is nothing short of phenomenal. With the display open and the notebook laying flat on one’s desk, the “palmrest” is a pencil eraser’s height above the surface of a desk. The real beauty of this notebook lies in its sleek design with smooth, rounded edges.

The downside to this design  includes the missing features that have become standard on notebooks almost since the notebook first came out: user-replaceable batteries, decent port selection, and even a docking connector. While Apple made it possible to get away with an external hub and USB devices on the road for additional hookups, not having a spare battery to swap in is a huge disadvantage.

The MacBook Air keyboard’s slim key design is the same that is found on other Apple products. It takes a while to get used to the layout, but once one gets past the transition, it is noticeable that the keyboard is very well-built and actually fairly comfortable to type on. Individual keys require a little more pressure to activate.

The touchpad had a few unique qualities that are not seen in most notebooks. For a Windows PC user, the touchpad seemed monstrous, measuring in at 4.12” by 2.48,” compared to the average Windows laptop touchpad size. The problem with this is that the palm of your hand is always touching the edge of the touchpad while  typing, and triggers a two-touch motion  like scrolling, instead of moving the cursor. It’s pretty clear there is a problem when multiple touches disable a “multi-touch” touchpad.

Apple has made changes to the notebook in ways that some people will love and others will hate. On the one hand it offers a super thin, lightweight design, but on the other they take away ports and give one a permanent battery. This notebook also suffers from some early release driver quirks, but those should hopefully be resolved in the near future. Overall this is a promising notebook, and if possible,  will probably get even thinner in the future.