Apple Announces New 13.3-Inch and 11.6-Inch MacBook Air Models with Flash Storage

At the close of Apple's Back to the Mac event today, Steve Jobs announced two new MacBook Air models feature 13.3-inch and 11.6-inch displays.

As rumored, the new MacBook Air models do not have traditional hard drives, featuring only flash storage. Both models have Core 2 Duo processors, 2 GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics cards. The new MacBook Air models have unibody chassis like the latest MacBook Pro models, full keyboards, stereo speakers, FaceTime cameras and glass multi-touch trackpads. Both models can have their RAM upgraded to 4GB from Apple's online store.

Battery life is claimed to be 7 hours for wireless web browsing on the 13.3-inch model and 5 hours on the 11.6-inch model, with a standby time of 30 days for both sizes

Both new MacBook Air models have high-resolution LED-backlit displays, with the 13.3 inch-model offering 1440 x 900 pixels and the 11.6-inch model carrying 1366 x 768 pixels.

Pricing begins at $999 for the 11.6-inch MacBook Air with 64 GB of storage and goes up to $1,599 for the 13.3-inch model with 256 GB of storage. Both MacBook Air models are available starting today.

With the new MacBook Air lacking an internal optical drive, Apple has included a "Software Reinstall Drive" USB stick carrying a unique Apple design to be used to restore Mac OS X and iLife. iWork is also included on the drive if the machine has been custom-configured to include the software. As it did with the original MacBook Air, Apple is continuing to offer an external MacBook Air Superdrive, now priced at $79. The MacBook Air can also wirelessly take advantage of the optical drive on a nearby Mac or PC for software installation purposes.