Apple's skinny MacBook Air laptop is fat with features

SAN FRANCISCO -- But on first impressions, there's no denying that Apple has designed another gorgeous machine. Apple has managed to cram in a full-size keyboard, 13.3-inch backlit widescreen display, iSight video camera, 2 gigabytes of RAM, state-of-the-art Wi-Fi and an 80-GB hard drive. The whole package weighs three pounds and ranges from 0.16 to 0.76 inches thick.

You don't realize just how thin that is until you see Jobs pull the machine out of one of those yellow interoffice envelopes.

The keyboard felt comfortable during a very brief typing test. And I was able to enlarge and rotate pictures on the screen by using iPhone-like "multi-touch" gestures (pinching, rotating, tapping, swiping and scrolling) on the track pad.

Pint-size laptop computers always exact compromises. Perhaps the most glaring in Air's case is the lack of a replaceable battery. Much as the iPod, the Air's battery and other components are sealed inside and are not easily removed.

What's more, Apple dispenses with a drive for loading CDs or DVDs. But the need for such a drive is somewhat diminished in the age of digital downloads, such as the iTunes movie rentals Jobs announced Tuesday.

And Apple lets you remotely install software by wirelessly accessing other Macs or PCs in your house, which probably have CD/DVD drives. Apple is also selling a $99 external "SuperDrive" that plugs into the Air's universal serial bus (USB) port.

The Air can also connect to a large cinematic display and headphones.

To complement Wi-Fi, I'd have liked Apple to also include the ability to connect to cellphone networks.

As with all Macs, Air comes with Apple's best-of-breed iLife multimedia software suite and the Leopard OS X operating system. The base configuration comes with a 1.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.