The previous generation MacBook Air was thin enough to slice a birthday cake or a loaf of bread as an ample library of YouTube videos proved at the time of the notebook’s release. It was so thin, in fact, that though I thought the laptop was functionally useless for real world use in that its wimpy specs and abysmal battery life, it would have been my go-to laptop for use in a post-apocalypse setting: simply file along the edge of the unibody enclosure and the first generation MacBook Air would have made a dandy makeshift machete, perfect for slicing the jugular of a gasoline-crazed motorcycle psycho or lopping off the top of the skull of a flesh-hungry zombie.

The latest MacBook Air is even thinner than its predecessor, and therefore continues the trend of being an excellent survivalist’s laptop. In fact, the new MacBook Air is actually thinner than the blade of an axe, even at the axe’s sharpest point. Yowza. Don’t knock it off the table and onto your toes.

Here’s my question: how long it will take a third-party accessory manufacturer to start selling a heavy, snap-on axe handle for the Air? I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

I hate to crow, I really do, but we nailed it on the MacBook Air rumors.

Just look at our mockup above, which we published on Monday, and the real deal. It’s pretty uncanny, especially as the designer, Don Draper, mocked it up based on a description from a source. Of course, Apple is very consistent with its design language, which makes things easier. We got the color of the screen bezel wrong and forgot to include the headphone jack. But still — just look at it.

We got most of the specs right too.

Feast your eyes on the sleek new curves on the Macbook Air. Apple has definitely made one of the most beautiful notebooks I’ve ever seen. This new thin and light unibody notebook will definitely be an eye catcher.

Click the read link to see more images.

Buster Heine: The new MacBook Air has a nice wafting odor of sex coming from the design (except for the metal bezel), but the specs and pricing are a bit disappointing for me. I’m not a rich businessman on the go, so I don’t think I’m in the target demographic of the new MBAs.

From a practical standpoint, the 13-inch is irrelevant. I’m really attracted to that beautiful 11.6 inch unit with a $999 price point, but there’s no point in replacing my 13′ Macbook Pro for an underpowered machine that is a few pounds lighter.

The new Macbook Airs confuse me. They seem designed to be a secondary computer, but if I already have an iPad + keyboard, an iPhone, and a MacBook Pro, there’s no point in buying it because it can’t handle everything a MacBook Pro can, and it’s too expensive to be an amateur’s computer. If Apple can bring down the price on the new units I might be tempted, but for now I’ll be resisting the urge to buy the new Apple gear, no matter how sexy it looks.

This is the software reinstall disk for the new MacBook Air. Cool eh?

Here’s the details of what’s on it, according to Apple’s knowledgebase article:

[polldaddy poll=”3957905″]

Steve Jobs called it the “future of the MacBook” line, but are you ready to give up your MacBook Pro for these shiny newcomers?

The 11.6-inch starts at $999 for 64GB SSD space and the 13.3-inch starts at $1,299 for a 128GB hard drive, and jumps to $1,599 for a 256GB hard drive.

What’s better: thin and slim or the old workhorse?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Steve Jobs has just come on stage with his “one more thing”… and as predicted, it’s a new MacBook Air, in both 11.6 and 13.3-inch versions.

Steve explains that with the new MacBook Air, they wanted to leverage the advantages of the iPad to a real laptop, including instant on, great battery life, amazing standby time, solid state storage, no movie parts and thin and light.

That’s the design philosophy that led to the new MacBook Air. It’s a completely unibody design, 0.11 inches thick at its thinnest, and 0.68 inches at its thickest. Overall, it’s 90% smaller and lighter, with completely silent operation.

The 13.3-incher is running 1440×900 pixels, which makes it a higher pixel density than even the 15-inch MacBook Pro. It features a 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo Processor, a max of 2GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, a full size multitouch trackpad, one USB port, an SD card slot and a FaceTime camera.

It’s the battery life that astounds, though. It’s a holy crap moment: the new 13.3-inch MacBook Air will supposedly have a 30 day standby time and seven hours of wireless web usage. This thing is basically all battery inside.

The 11.6-inch is mostly the same specs, but has a woeful 1.4Ghz Core 2 Duo Processor, a smaller 1366×768 resolution and only 5 hours on wireless web… presumably because they had to shrink the battery packs.

So what’ll these cost? Well, the 11.6-inch starts at $999 for 64GB SSD space, while a bump to $1199 will double your storage. The 13.3-inch starts at $1299 for a 128GB hard drive, and jumps to $1599 for a 256GB hard drive.

Honestly? This is pretty underwhelming: even accounting for the major performance bumps you see when you go SSD, that’s a wimpy computer for the price. We’re not sure we’re sold. What do you think?

In just two and a half hours, we can all expect Steve Jobs to strut on stage and orgiastically unburden himself of the many new secret products and developments kept a lid upon in Cupertino for the past few months… but thanks to some too-eager web monkey’s blunder over on the official Apple support forums, we have semi-official confirmation of several new products that we now know to expect later today.

Apparently, the official Apple forums have already been setup with new sections dedicated to iMovie ’11, iPhoto ’11 and GarageBand ’11… all of which are applications to be found in the rumored iLife ’11 software suite that is expected to be announced today.

There’s more juicy gossip than that though: the Polish geeks who found the new product sections also found one for the new MacBook Air, as well as a “Reserved 2010” section, which could be just about anything. Does Steve have a surprise announcement up his sleeve, or will that Reserved 2010 sub-forum turn into an official section for Mac OS X 10.7 or even the CDMA iPhone?

On Wednesday, Steve Jobs will likely introduce a redesigned 13.3-inch MacBook Air with a bigger battery and more ports — yet thinner and lighter — than the current model, CultofMac.com has independently confirmed.

Apple will probably also add a second, smaller 11.6-inch “Netbook” version, according to our well-placed source.

Our information independently corroborates recent reports by AppleInsider, and Engadget, which ran a picture of a purported prototype over the weekend.

The new model is also apparently much snappier than its underpowered predecessor. “It boots so fast, it’s unbelievable,” our source says. “It’s amazing how fast it boots up.”

There may be a new smaller, cheaper MacBook Air in the air, according to rumor reports:

• 11.6-inch screen
• Significantly cheaper than current $1,499 starting price
• Unibody case with carbon fiber — may weigh less than 2.7lbs
• Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and Nvidia MCP89 graphics (but may have first AMD CPU used in a Mac)
• Solid State hard drive

MacRumors: Apple to Introduce 11.6-Inch MacBook Air With ‘SSD Card’ Integrated Storage Next Week?

AppleInsider: Sources: Apple to unveil revamped 11.6-inch MacBook Air next week

CNET: Source: Smaller MacBook Air on Apple’s agenda