The rumors were true. The MacBook Air, announced by Steve Jobs yesterday, is the thinnest computer ever. Something tells me it’s is going to be a big seller this year.

Starting at $1799, the Air is so thin it can fit inside one of those yellow envelopes (pictured to the right). It’s tiny, and it’s a full-featured Mac. Well, almost full-featured.

To fit a computer into that tiny package, some compromises were made (as usual with ultraportables).

• Few upgrades available
• Internal Lithium-Polymer battery cannot be swapped-out at will
• No optical drive. You can (and will want to) purchase a $99 external DVD burner. There’s a feature that allows you to “borrow” the drive of another PC/Mac via Wi-Fi, but you really should pay the extra $99.
• Lack of ports. There is only one USB 2.0 port, a micro-DVI port, and a headphone jack
• Internal speakers are mono

Other than that, this is a real cool computer.

• The Touchpad responds to several iPhone-like gestures (pinch to zoom, etc).
• It weighs 3.0 pounds, and is only 0.76 inches thick.
• It has a 13.3 inch display and full-size keyboard (no dedicated numerical keypad, though)
• 802.11n
• 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo (or optional 1.8GHz)
• 2GB of RAM (only option available)
• 80GB Hard Drive or 64GB SSD (no higher capacities for either)
• Onboard Intel GMA X3100 graphics
• 5 hours of battery life

If you need a thin and light laptop, and can deal with the limitations, this is the computer for you.

Further Reading

• MacBook Air: Holding my breath
• MacBook Air’s tradeoffs
• MacBook Air: Thinning My Expectations

Apple’s iTunes now has some serious competition from Amazon.com’s online music store. The e-commerce giant’s music store is totally DRM-free, with all four of the major labels onboard. I think it’s safe to say DRM is on the way out.

However, iTunes hasn’t gone totally DRM-free yet. Plenty of their music still carries DRM, and the albums that are available without it cost more.

I’d like to say iTunes isn’t dead yet.

The iPod is by far the most-owned portable music player, and the average iPod-owner is too tech-illiterate to know that Amazon sells music, know that it works with their iPod, and know how to get the music they bought on to the iPod. iTunes is so easy that my cat could by music and load it onto an iPod.

Also, Amazon may be the first to be totally DRM-less, but I’m sure iTunes will follow suit. Heck, there won’t even be record labels in a few years. Instead, artists will simply distribute their music through iTunes, Amazon, etc. There’s no need for the big record labels anymore.