New MacBook Air announced

If there ever was a game changing notebook, you can say that the MacBook Air nailed it down right. After all, in the age where netbooks did not really take off due to their limited processing power and super small displays that made it more or less impractical to do serious work, Apple came out with the MacBook Air, and boy, did that piece of hardware take the world by storm. The new MacBook Air was just announced at WWDC 2012 this morning, and what kind of goodness are we looking at?

Needless to say, not new hardware is worth announcing unless it comes with updated hardware, and I am quite sure fans of the MacBook Air line will not be disappointed to hear that there will be Ivy Bridge processors running underneath the hood, with the most powerful processor option available to the masses being the 2GHz dual-core i7 processor. Not only that, it will come with up to 8GB of 1600MHz RAM to keep your processor company, in addition to an integrated graphics chipset that is said to be up to “60% faster” than its predecessor. Sounds good? Let us dive into the other details right after the jump.

512GB of flash memory has been thrown into the mix, clearly making this one feature that might just make fence sitters like me take the plunge. After all, it will clearly dent the chances of Ultrabooks to make it big this year, since the asking price of $999 for the entry level model as well as $1,099 for the model with a faster processor will clearly make the new MacBook Air a highly attractive proposition.

Another thing that clearly upped the ante for the MacBook Air would be the inclusion of not one, but two USB 3.0 ports. This would mean apart from half a terabyte of storage space, you will now be able to enjoy USB 3.0 connectivity – and that means cheaper external hard drives that have flooded the market in recent times with this particular connection. Other hardware specifications include a 720p FaceTime HD camera.

The 11″ model comes with a similar 1366 x 768 resolution for its display, while the 13″ model, too, will not be any different, maintaining a similar resolution count of 1440 x 900 pixels, although it will be $100 cheaper than the current model. If you are interested, both 2012 MacBook Air models will start to ship today.