The Air was designed to balance both performance and portability; it has a full-sized keyboard design and a machined aluminium casing with extremely low weight and thickness.
The MacBook Air is designed for thinness; it is also lighter than most competing models. The computer features a glossy LED backlit display and a full-size keyboard, as well as a large trackpad that responds to Multi-Touch gestures such as pinching, swiping, and rotating. With the release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the Air’s multi-touch trackpad also supports handwriting recognition of Chinese characters.