MacBook Air Developer Note

PATA was used because those little ipod drives do not come in SATA. With a mobile drive the PATA is as small if not smaller than the SATA ports. Also, iPod require High Power USB, so I should hope all macs have high power usb, not just the air. Also, Solid state drives have slower data throughput than regular hard drives. Their speed advantage does not come from raw data transfers but instead they have incredibly low seek times. Seeks times are more important for performance. Low seek times means that when the OS or a program load, the files it needs are found more quickly. Solid state rocks at this. I did a solid state conversion of my PowerBook G3
http://pismo.jeffburg.com

Yeh the MBA uses the same GMA X3100 graphics as the MacBooks...which will do 1920 x 1200

Erase that previous post... sorry Micro DVI (video out)
just realized it :(

My Bad

Isn't the new SuperDrive for MacBook Air possibly only workable with this new device precisely because for Content Control, it is connected to the graphics processor on the north bridge and not connected to the USB controller on the south bridge???

Can anybody say DRM? external B-ray disks?

Although I can't imagine it to be true, the developer note states that in Extended Desktop Mode " ... the maximum external display resolution supported by the MacBook Air is 1280 by 800 at 60 Hz for analog displays and 1280 by 800 at 60 Hz for digital displays."

This would be a real bummer for anyone using > 20" displays.

Apple's specs on the Air website on the other hand state that the maximum resolution on external displays is 1920x1200.

Anyone had a chance to hook up the Air on 24" display?

For the external drive...

If power is the issue, couldn't you rig the cord so there are two power sources?

Just a thought....

I wonder if the high powered USB can supply enough power to the USB EVDO devices to operate at full power. Most come with a Y adapter to pull power from 2 USB ports if needed.

A high powered USB port means it can output a max of 0.5A, all the ports included with all the macs comply to that norm.
Usually, ports in hubs (like the one in the apple keyboard) can't provide that much power, thats why they call the others "high powered".
So this external super drive should work in any mac, well, maybe not in older ones with USB 1.0 due to speed limitations.

Don't the new aluminum iMacs also have high powered USB ports?
I remember there being a report on the USB 2.0 hubs in the new keyboards only powering iPods and USB harddrives if they were hooked up to the new iMacs...

Anyone care to compare the specs on the two?

MacBook Air Computers (January 2008)
The MacBook Air computer introduced in January 2008, based on the Intel Core 2 Duo, has multiple internal USB controllers built into the South Bridge.

The external USB port supports 500 mA at 5 V for 2.5 W.

The external USB port complies with the Universal Serial Bus Specification 2.0. High-speed USB devices are accessed via the Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) and full-speed and low-speed devices are accessed via the Universal Host Controller Interface (UHCI).

A high-powered Apple keyboard can be attached directly to the external port, and software will enable one of its downstream ports to supply 500 mA of power. The external port also supports the External MacBook Air SuperDrive when it is directly attached.