Gizmos, Gadgets and Steve Jobs, Too

It’s a rock concert! It’s a pep rally! It’s a news conference!

No, it’s the Macworld Expo, the annual four-day trade show in San Francisco, where Apple introduces its latest products before adoring crowds.

On Tuesday, Steve Jobs unveiled four developments. Item 1: Time Capsule, a wireless backup hard drive for your entire network. It’s sleek and, considering it doubles as a wireless router, not unreasonably priced ($500 for a terabyte of storage).

Item 2: Software enhancements to the iPhone and iPod Touch. One of them pinpoints your current location on a Google map — pretty sneaky, considering these gadgets don’t actually have G.P.S. (Instead, they calculate your location by consulting signal strength from nearby wireless Internet hot spots and — on the iPhone — cellular towers.)

Item 3: Downloadable movies. You pay $4 for a new release, which you must finish watching 24 hours after you start.

That’s the same deal offered by Amazon, Vudu and so on, but Apple has deals with every major movie studio (although the selection will be slim at first). And you can start watching a movie on the computer, and finish it on your iPod or iPhone.

Item 3.5: New software and a lower price ($230) for Apple’s slow-selling Apple TV. Now this set-top box can download rent-a-movies (and Flickr photos, and iTunes music, and podcasts) for viewing on your TV directly — no computer required.

Apple’s last and best announcement, though, was its hotly rumored three-pound laptop, called the MacBook Air ($1,800). Apple says it’s the thinnest laptop in the world, and no wonder; this thing looks like it’s descended from a spatula.

It’s a stunningly beautiful aluminum slab, three-quarters of an inch thick. Its edges are beveled to look even thinner. When it’s on a table, you might mistake this laptop for a placemat.

The MacBook Air’s footprint is no smaller than the existing MacBook in the other dimensions (12.8 by 9.8 inches).

Apple

There’s some margin around the 13.3-inch screen and full-size keyboard, and that edge-tapering business wastes a bit of internal space.

But for anyone who shares Apple’s admiration for elegance, the trade-off is worth it. This laptop’s cool aluminum skin and smooth edges make it ridiculously satisfying to hold, carry, open and close. You can’t take your eyes or your hands off it.

Unlike other ultraportables, this one makes no sacrifice in screen size, keyboard size or battery life (Apple claims five hours a charge).

It also has an oversize trackpad that lets you scroll, rotate or magnify photos and other objects using iPhonish two-finger gestures (in Apple programs only, alas). You can’t make a three-pound laptop without sacrificing something, however. And some serious sacrifices were made on this machine.

Here’s the toughest one to take: the battery is sealed inside. You can’t swap it out during a long flight.

That’s a familiar Apple trick for saving bulk; as on the iPod and iPhone, sealing the battery eliminates the need for a walled compartment, battery contacts and a door. But when this battery no longer holds a charge, a couple of years from now, you’ll have to pay Apple $130 to install a new one.

The hard drive is the same miniature type that’s in the iPod. Its 80 gigabytes are plenty for office work, but a little tight for big photo or video collections.

Just as the Web’s rumor mill had predicted, you can order the MacBook Air with, instead, a 64-gigabyte solid-state drive (an up-and-coming acronym to learn: S.S.D.), meaning it’s made of flash memory instead of spinning disks. With no moving parts, an S.S.D. is extremely rugged; it’s also supposed to offer improved battery life and better speed, especially in starting up and opening programs.

Yet Apple is playing down this option, probably because these drives are still so small and expensive: the S.S.D. adds $1,000 to the Air’s price. Meanwhile, Apple hasn’t yet measured the speed and battery benefits, and doesn’t yet have any S.S.D.-equipped models to test.

As on most ultraportables, the Air also sacrifices a CD/DVD drive. You can buy Apple’s external U.S.B. drive for $100, if you’re so inclined — it’s tiny, just a hair bigger than an actual DVD.

But get this: Apple says that you don’t need a CD/DVD drive at all.

CONTINUED : Gizmos, Gadgets and Steve Jobs, Too

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