Ultra-portable Apple notebook to splash down at Macworld Expo

The tiny sub-notebook is 13 inches long. It is approximately 50 percent lighter and strikingly slimmer than the company's current 15-inch professional MacBook Pro offering. It is supplied with a new breed of 13-inch LCD display panels. They feature LED backlights rather than cold cathode fluorescent backlights (CCFLs) and thus enhance power efficiency.

 

In achieving this compact notebook, Apple has decided to leave out the optical disc drive. The new sub-notebook will mark the advent of features not yet available with Apple's existing portable offerings, such as onboard NAND flash. The system will represent the first Mac to utilize the solid-state memory in order to improve power efficiency and facilitate near instantaneous boot times, among other advantages.

 

While pricier than CCFLs, LED-backlit panels offer increased color saturation and are more efficient at distributing light evenly across the entire display surface. They also consume less power, run cooler, and last longer than CCFL-backlit displays. When combined with on-board NAND flash drives, which contain no moving parts and therefore also draw less power, the technology is expected to translate into significant improvements in battery performance as employed in the new notebook design.