Probably since I can no longer cram one into my pockets along with my house keys ever since I donated my parachute pants to charity, I haven’t found Apple’s notebooks to be nearly as prone to scratches as the iPhone. Your mileage may well vary, though, so rest assured that Zagg’s invisibleSHIELD line of protective coatings are now available in sizes suitable for sticking on a new 11- or 13-inch MacBook Air.

Thinner at its thinnest point than even the edge of an axe blade, Apple’s new MacBook Airs could conceivably be used to split a skull or two, but according to the always-paranoid Transportation Security Administration, it’s still less dangerous than a small bottle of water: if you have to go through an airport security checkpoint with your 11-inch Air, the TSA has determined that it never once has to be taken out of your bag for closer inspection.

As we wrote a couple days ago, the guys over at TechRestore will be happy to take your new MacBook Air and give it a matte display for just $250… but doing the dry run on the operating, they uncovered some of the MacBook Air’s secrets, and according to their CEO, the panels Apple is using in the new Airs are paper thin and absolutely breathtaking.

The new MacBook Airs are locked down tight, with our good friends over at iFixIt describing it as perhaps Apple’s least user-serviceable notebook yet. How locked down is it? Even the RAM is soldered to the motherboard. In fact, once you actually break open the MacBook Air, about the only thing that is remotely user replaceable is actually the Toshiba SSD drives installed inside.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that companies are already hawking replacement SSDs for the MacBook Air. The company in question is Photofast, based in Taiwan, and they’re now promising imminent delivery of a 256GB SSD memory module which will double the maximum memory capacity of your Air.

Price and release dates are still unknown, unfortunately, but according to Photofast, the upgrade will be fast and stable, and will actually give your new Air a 30% performance boost in read or write speeds of Apple’s advertised 160MB/s speeds. Apple’s conservative in their estimates, so it’s probably not that big of a boost, but considering the SSD drive in the Air is mostly responsible for the slender notebook’s excellent performance (despite relatively puny processors), even a slight bump in SSD performance is likely to be noticeable.

Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Air isn’t anything like the old one. It’s incredible. It’s incredibly thin, light, and powerful. It’s blazing fast. It’s incredibly beautiful and well made.

It has an older CPU and comes up short with only 2GBytes of RAM in the base model, but it is not underpowered. It’s a perfect fit for users like me, who aren’t rendering 3D graphics, it’s more than perfect. It’s hugely better than previous models of the 13-inch MacBook Air. Incredibly thin and light, yet very capable of running a large number of applications without showing the infamous Mac OS X beach ball.

Unlike the 11-inch MacBook Air, reviewed by my editor Leander, there are a few less compromises in the 13-inch MacBook Air. While larger the 13-inch model still excels in the most important things portability, durability, and functionality.

Last year, I also bought a 13-inch MacBook Pro, which I loved, but in comparison to the 13-inch Air, it is huge, only a little bit faster, and comes with an optical drive that I seldom use any more.

I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t this guy toss the new MacBook Air in the dump last week?” Well, last week I did and now it looks like I’m going to have to eat crow after buying a 13-inch MacBook Air last Saturday. Read on to find out why.

Laptop users usually have a strong preference for either glossy or matte displays, but unfortunately, if you buy an Apple notebook, you’d better get used to seeing reflections: all of Cupertino’s current notebooks save the 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros come with displays of the glossy variety.

So what if you’re twitching for the new MacBook Air, but can’t stand seeing the translucent enantiomorph of your ugly mug overlaid on your desktop all the time? No problem: just call up TechRestore, send in your MacBook Air along with $250 bucks and they’ll rub some fine-grained sandpaper all over your glossy display until it nice and matted.

Sorry, we kid: in actuality, TechRestore will simply retrofit a matte display into your MacBook Air that is identical, spec-for-spec, with the stock one. Not worth a quarter grand to me personally, but then again, I’m a narcissist.

[via TUAW]

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDb7qwrpFqs

Every time a new and much anticipated gadget finally hits store shelves, it is inevitable that a couple losers will buy one just to film themselves destroying it. As you can see in the video above, the new MacBook Air will not be spared this ignominy, as a bewigged Jake Gyllenhall lookalike and an individual who can only be described as the one of the grossest humanoids in the world blow up a new Air with dynamite… and in slow motion.

If you’re a regular user of Skype and you’re considering picking up a MacBook Air, be warned: for some reason, Skype version 2.8.x just does not want to play nice with Apple’s new, wafer-thin notebook.

It’s not clear what is causing the problem, but the symptom is obvious: when you first open Skype, the login phase never fully resolves itself. Instead, users find themselves stuck staring at the login window until they quit the app.

One of the little secrets that has made Apple the most profitable company in tech is their ability to achieve high margins on their gizmos, but the new MacBook Airs might set a record even for Apple: according to analysts who have estimated its bill of materials, the entry-level, 11.6-inch MacBook Air costs only $718 to make.

That means that for every 11.6-inch MacBook Air Apple sells, they make $281, a profit margin of 28.1%. That’s for the 64GB: buy yourself a 128GB MacBook Air and the profit margin jumps to 34%. Buy a 128GB 13.3-inch MacBook Air and that margin nudges forward again, this time to 37%.

Those margins are excellent, even comparatively: Apple, on average, achieves a profit margin of just 20% on the rest of their laptops.

Apple’s new 11-inch MacBook Air is astonishing. It’s unbelievable. It’s the most exciting consumer PC that’s come out for years. It’s a netbook, but it’s not a PoS. It’s blazing fast. It’s unbelievably light and thin. It’s beautifully made. Really beautifully made.

It has an older CPU and skimpy RAM, but it is NOT underpowered. For users like me, who aren’t editing Hollywood movies, it’s more than adequate. Heck, it’s a huge leap forward. Like Jobs said at the launch, this is the future of notebooks. Extremely thin and light, yet capable of running dozens of applications without bogging down. There are compromises, of course, but the most important things — portability, durability and functionality — are very much in place.

Last year, I bought a 13-inch MacBook Pro, which I loved. But in comparison to the 11-inch Air, it looks like a bloated old relic. It’s positively primitive: a porky throwback to a previous computing era.

I know what you’re thinking, “Cult of Mac. This guy’s a zealot. He’ll buy anything Steve Jobs tells him too.” I admit, I’m a fan. But the Air is important. It’s different. It’s right up there with the iPad and the iPhone. This is a breakthrough product.