Apple CEO Steve Jobs has introduced the MacBook Air, a computer that the company billed as the world’s thinnest notebook. The MacBook Air is small enough to fit inside an interoffice mailing envelope. The price of MacBook is starting at $1,799 and as soon as possible will be available.

The MacBook Air is incredibly light and tiny. The MacBook Air looks owe a lot to the MacBook Pro and previous silver Mac laptop models. However, its curved edges and tapered shape are unlike anything I have seen on a Mac laptop in a long time, if ever.

The MacBook Air is made of aluminum and glass, and uses the same design language as recent Apple consumer products: black on silver. The MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display that has a 1280 x 800-pixel resolution. The backlighting save power and provides “instant on” response from the moment you turn it on, according to Jobs. The MacBook Air has a slightly wedge-shaped profile. It weighs about 3 pounds, and sports a thickness of 0.16-0.76 inches. Moreover, it is 12.8 inches wide and 8.95 inches deep.

The MacBook Air is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo chip running at 1.6GHz, with 1.8GHz available as an option. Jobs noted that Intel was willing to engineer a new version of the Core 2 Duo specifically to Apple’s specifications; it is 60 percent smaller than others are. The processor operates with 4MB of on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed, and uses an 800MHz front side bus. 2GB of 667MH DDR2 SDRAM is also included. Moreover, the laptop features a 1.8-inch hard disk drive with 80GB of storage capacity standard. A 64GB solid-state disk (SSD) drive is an option. The hard drive is a Parallel ATA (PATA) model that operates at 4200 RPM.

Apple claims that the battery life of MacBook Air could be the biggest trouble point, with a couple people rating it around 3.5 hours with heavy use, and even less when watching a movie on tunes. This seems that Apple’s five-hour prediction seems a bit optimistic.

The MacBook Air features a slimmed down MagSafe connector for power. It comes with a 45-watt power adapter. A flip-down door on one side reveals USB 2.0, Micro-DVI (to connect an external display) and a headphone jack. The MacBook Air includes 802.11n-based wireless networking support and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Moreover, Apple estimates that with wireless networking turned on, the MacBook Air can get about 5 hours of battery life.

No internal optical drive is included. However, Apple will offer a US$99 USB 2.0-based add-on SuperDrive for users who need it. For users that choose not to get the optical drive, Apple is offering a new software feature on this machine called Remote Disk. The software enables you to “borrow” the optical drive of another Mac or PC on the same network as the MacBook Air, to use for installing software, for example.

Apple has been frequently in the crosshairs of environmental group Greenpeace in recent years. Jobs offered information about the environmental goals behind the MacBook Air — it has a fully recyclable aluminum case, and is “the first” to have a mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass. All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free, and the retail packaging uses 56 percent less material than the MacBook packaging.

Therefore, if you need the sexiest and slimmest thing going, there is no doubt that the MacBook Air fits the bill. However, it certainly looks like Apple excluded many potential customers with the compromises made.