macbook air

The new Macbook Air subnotebook was just introduced in Steve Jobs' keynote address at Macworld San Francisco. Among the touted features of the superslim, ultralight wedge is its environmental friendliness: the circuit boards do not contain BFR or PVC, and its screen contains neither mercury nor arsenic. (As on current 15" Macbook Pros, LEDs backlight the TFT screen, rather than the usual fluorescent tube.) The lightweight laptop is also said to arrive in 56% packaging than the current Macbook.

- So, what are BFR and PVC (well, that's polyvinyl chloride), and what are they doing in circuit boards?
- Why are mercury and arsenic used in flat panel displays, and how did Apple get around it?
Have they put thought into minimizing the environmental impact of the device's (Chinese) manufacture?
- Lighter electronics should mean less fuel needed to deliver them to market.
- What happens to all the laptops that are outmoded by the environmentally friendlier alternative?
- The MBA does not have a removable battery. (A machine designed on the principle that you can never be too rich or too thin, it's more for the fashion-conscious than the tech-geek.) Although it can be replaced by Apple, happens when its battery has dropped in capacity, and a newer, more attractive model is out anyhow?
- Does Apple's control of the battery life-cycle, from installation to replacement, and, I assume, recycling, result in a higher recycling capture rate than if it were left up to the user?
- How much does marketing determine our access to information of this kind?

Apple is branding its new laptop and itself as the environmentally friendlier option. Have any other computer makers made this claim? The Macbook Air is slim, and untethered. I can practically hear the breathy music. Call it a yogabook.

(The thing that really stood me on my ear, though, was the slick new Apple movie rental system. Their model combines streaming and downloads, items that were treated separately at the outset of WGA/AMPTP contract negotiations. Writers, this is what you're striking for. The profitability of downloaded entertainment is as theoretical as evolution or global warming. Fight on.

Ok, tech glut content: the new distribution model works on the same Apple TV that saw daylight at this time last year. This is a big difference from a traditional media delivery system: you don't throw out the old box and get a new one, you upgrade the software on the old box to make it new.)