Both the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air now feature the latest generation of Intel processors, the Core i5 and i7. With speeds up to 1.8GHz and faster memory, the new MacBook Air gains up to 2.5x the processing performance over the previous generation.1 MacBook Air also features the Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor, which includes an on-chip engine for video encoding and decoding. That means you experience video playback and FaceTime calls that are smoother, more responsive, and more true to life.

Thunderbolt I/O.

All-flash storage.

Devices like iPhone and iPad have already demonstrated the advantages of flash storage: reliability, speed, and efficiency. So the decision to use flash storage in an ultracompact notebook like MacBook Air made perfect sense. With flash, your computer starts up in almost no time and accesses data quickly. Flash also gives MacBook Air the astonishing ability to remain in standby mode for up to 30 days.3 Which means your MacBook Air snaps to in an instant, whether you open it tomorrow, next week, or next month.

Backlit keyboard.

As incredibly compact as MacBook Air is, it still manages to fit a full-size keyboard that makes typing as natural as it is comfortable. And now the keyboard is backlit, so you can type with ease in even the dimmest light. A built-in ambient light sensor detects changes in lighting conditions and adjusts the display and keyboard brightness automatically. From a seat in a sunny café to a seat on a cross-country red-eye, you’ll always have the perfect lighting for any environment.

Multi-Touch trackpad.

Display, camera, and speakers.

High-resolution display.

Millions of pixels. Millimeters thin.

Corner to corner and pixel by pixel, the MacBook Air display is both an engineering feat and a design breakthrough. The display measures a mere 4.86 millimeters (0.19 inch) thin, yet the resolution is so high, you’ll feel like you’re looking at a much larger screen. And with good reason. The 11-inch MacBook Air features a resolution equal to that of your typical 13-inch notebook, while the 13-inch MacBook Air wows with a resolution equivalent to a typical15-inch notebook.

FaceTime camera.

Your smile goes for miles.

The wafer-thin MacBook Air display houses something pretty huge: the FaceTime camera. It’s so thin — even thinner than the camera on iPhone 4 — you barely notice it, but it’s incredibly capable. Using the FaceTime for Mac app, you can make video calls with anyone who has a Mac, iPad 2, iPhone 4, or the latest iPod touch.2

Stereo speakers.

Heard but not seen.

Despite its compact form, MacBook Air delivers full stereo sound. Space-efficient design inside the enclosure allows for the placement of left and right speakers that project sound through the keyboard. So you’re able to enjoy a richer audio experience while chatting online, watching TV shows, listening to music, or playing games.

Long-lasting battery.

Since space-saving flash storage leaves room for a bigger battery, you can devote more time to the things you enjoy most. Things like browsing the web, editing photos, and watching videos. Get up to 5 hours of battery life on a single charge on the 11-inch model and up to 7 hours on the 13-inch model. Put MacBook Air to sleep, and it enters standby mode to conserve battery life for up to 30 days.3 When you come back to your MacBook Air and open it up, it’s on in an instant.

• Microsoft working on ‘PocketTouch’ device input through clothing || Via Geek Wire

• Virtual buttons in the UI, instead of taking up a capacitive screen
• Voice typing, capable of recognizing speech and converting it into text
• Widgets in a new tab, listed in a similar list to apps
• Easier-to-create folders, with a drag-and-drop style
• A customizable launcher
• In a new phone app, visual voicemail functionality that lets user speed up or slow down *voicemail messages
• Pinch-to-zoom functionality in the calendar
• Offline search, a two-line preview, and new action bar at the bottom of the Gmail app
• Ability to swipe left or right to switch between Gmail conversations
• Integrated screenshot capture (accomplished by holding Power and Volume-Down buttons)
• Improved error correction on the keyboard
• Ability to access apps directly from lock screen (similar to HTC Sense 3.x)
• Improved copy and paste functionality
• Better voice integration and continuous dictating capability
• Face Unlock, a facial recognition service
• New tabbed web browser, allowing up to 16 tabs
• Automatic syncing of browser with user's Chrome bookmarks
• Modern Roboto font
• Data Usage section in settings that lets user set warnings when he reaches a certain amount of use and disable data when exceeding the limit
• Ability to shut down apps that are using data in the background
• Camera app: zero shutter lag, time lapse settings, zoom while recording
• Built-in photo editor
• New gallery layout, organized by location and person
• Refreshed 'People' app with social network integration, status updates and hi-res images
• Android Beam, a NFC feature that lets user exchange websites, contact info, directions, YouTube, etc.
• Hardware acceleration of the UI
• Resizeable widgets

Windows Phone 7.5 camera and Smart DJ settings

• Outlook Conversation View – Emails combined together in threads
• Lync Messaging Client – Enterprise messaging client
• Twitter integration – Tweets integration into people hub
• Office 365 integration – Office 365 features built-in
• Bing Vision – Scan QR, Microsoft Tags, books, CDs and DVDs
• Bing Audio – Similar to Shazam, will identify songs
• Windows Live Messenger integration – Integrated into the people hub and messaging hub
• Facebook Chat integration – Integrated into the people hub and messaging hub
• AOL Messenger integration – Integrated into the people hub and messaging hub
• Contacts grouping – Create groups of contacts to send messages to
• Xbox LIVE sync function – Sync function to likely sync settings/games across devices
• Now playing artist information on lock screen – album art on the lock screen
• Visual Voicemail support - Visual voicemail using same method as iOS/Android
• Network awareness NCSI support – improvements for switching between networks/optimization
• Internet Explorer 9 mobile – HTML5 support and hardware acceleration
• Multitasking support – switch quickly between apps
• Fast application resume – quickly resume recently used apps
• Podcast support – download podcasts via the Marketplace
• Turn-by-turn navigation in Bing Maps - voice guided directions and turn-by-turn
• SMS dictation – Microsoft tellme dictates messages
• East Asian Language keyboard support – additional language support
• Handwriting and dictionary support – support for writing Chinese characters
• Pin Outlook Folders – Pin folders as favorites inside Outlook
• SkyDrive integration – Access SkyDrive documents from Office Hub
• Kinect support for games - interact with Kinect and Xbox games from Windows Phone
• Outlook email server search – search Exchange servers from Outlook client
• Complex (alpha-numeric) password support – strong number and character password support
• Information Rights Management – support for protecting e-mails and Office documents
• Ringtone support – third party ringtone support
• App list – automatically detect list, implemented jump list and search for apps
• Marketplace search improvements – apps, podcasts, music separated for easy search
• App install improvements – progress bar install UI
• Search extras – User search actions can be connected to third-party apps
• Motion Sensor – apps to use new gyroscope hardware
• Background audio – apps can run audio in the background
• File download service – third-party apps can download files from the web
• Alarms – alarm notifications for third-party apps
• Pin app features – Users can pin live tiles of deep app features in third-party apps

• A New Look for Gmail | Google Operating System

• Sonalight Text by Voice

• MapsGL | via Chrome Experiments

“One of the areas that we are investing heavily is the camera experience where we intend to make the“Window Phone the best camera you will ever own”. The Windows Phone division is creating a phone experience that is personal, relevant, connected and FUN! Do you care about the quality of the memories that you are capturing with your phone? We are looking for a VERY strong SDET to join our team and help bring our big vision to life. The focus area of this team is our full end-to-end photo and camera experience from the hardware through software level. Your job is to ensure that experience is reliable, compelling both for customers and developers, performs well, and is super high-quality. In this position you will play a critical role in helping us take our current test arsenal and architect a solution that will let us run that arsenal across test environments, across locales, across identities, and across service boundaries.š We intend to dominate that market with the best capture and sharing experiences that delight the casual user to the digital enthusiast.”

On your PC
With a Zune Music Pass, you’ll be amazed as you discover, stream, and download more and more music on your PC.
On your Windows Phone
A Zune Music Pass is the ultimate access to entertainment. Get unlimited music and take it with you on your Windows Phone.
On your Xbox 360
A Zune Music Pass makes the entertainment experience extraordinary on your Xbox 360 with unlimited music streaming.

“We recently announced that, going forward, Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy, and that we will no longer be producing Zune players. So what does this mean for our current Zune users? Absolutely nothing. Your device will continue to work with Zune services just as it does today. And we will continue to honor the warranties of all devices for both current owners and those who buy our very last devices. Customer service has been, and will remain a top priority for us.”

• Thanks to WinRumors for the news tip

We’ve confirmed that the apps expected to be added with the next major update to Xbox Live will be based on Silverlight — at least to a point. The framework they’re being built on is codenamed “Lakeview”, which is essentially a prettied up version of Silverlight with new features like Xbox Kinect’s voice recognition and gesture control. Surprisingly enough, partners are not using Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming for video delivery, but have chosen to use H.264-encoded video with Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) instead.

• Silverlight To Power Apps On The New Xbox 360 Dashboard Update | Via LIVESIDE

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.

I’m truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’ death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives.The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor.  I will miss Steve immensely.

My condolences to Steve Jobs’ family and friends. We’ve lost a unique tech pioneer and auteur who knew how to make amazingly great products. Steve fought a long battle against tough odds in a very brave way. He kept doing amazing things in the face of all that adversity. As someone who has had his own medical challenges, I couldn’t help but be encouraged by how he persevered.

Those who knew Mr. Jobs say that one reason why he was able to keep innovating was because he didn’t dwell on past accomplishments or legacy but kept looking ahead and demanded that employees do the same.

In a product world led by Steve, everyone else is a forger or a fraud.  Tomorrow, the media will be full of paeans and pictures.  All you need do to remember Steve is look at what is in your hands.  If he didn’t design and make it himself, it came from someone doing their best to mimic his ideas. Steve had the faith to drive mercilessly for a nearly endless series of absolute visions, and the courage to live the life that this commitment demanded.

Jobs was considered by many to be the greatest corporate leader of the last half century, and indeed his numerous successes rank him alongside Ford, Disney and Edison as a giant of American business. He was a taskmaster who demanded the most from his employees – often in expletive-laden bursts – and wasn’t afraid to scrap products that didn’t meet his expectations. But consumers benefited from his perfectionism, which resulted in beautiful and intuitive products.

Apple’s very name reflected his unconventionality. In an era when engineers and hobbyists tended to describe their machines with model numbers, he chose the name of a fruit, supposedly because of his dietary habits at the time.
Coming on the scene just as computing began to move beyond the walls of research laboratories and corporations in the 1970s, Mr. Jobs saw that computing was becoming personal — that it could do more than crunch numbers and solve scientific and business problems — and that it could even be a force for social and economic change. And at a time when hobbyist computers were boxy wooden affairs with metal chassis, he designed the Apple II as a sleek, low-slung plastic package intended for the den or the kitchen. He was offering not just products but a digital lifestyle.
He put much stock in the notion of “taste,” a word he used frequently. It was a sensibility that shone in products that looked like works of art and delighted users. Great products, he said, were a triumph of taste, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.”

One of the most legendary businessmen in American history, Jobs turned three separate industries on their head in the 35 years he was involved in the technology industry.
Personal computing was invented with the launch of the Apple II in 1977. Legal digital music recordings were brought into the mainstream with the iPod and iTunes in the early 2000s, and mobile phones were never the same after the 2007 debut of the iPhone. Jobs played an instrumental role in the development of all three, and managed to find time to transform the art of computer-generated movie-making on the side.

Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.
By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity.  By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun.  And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last.  Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.
The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve’s wife Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him.