Key to the device is what's missing: Instead of the optical drive built into most other portable devices, the MacBook Air can wirelessly borrow another device's optical drive, so that it can access software or data stored on a disk.
"There is no one in the Valley who knows how to do optical transport, " says Optical's CEO, Hugh Martin.
"There is no one in the Valley who knows how to do optical transport, " says Optical's chief executive, Hugh Martin.
The prospect met the Midas-like venture capitalists of Kleiner Perkins, Optical's backers.
In one week in January Optical's Martin nabbed ten Nortel engineers.
The key to cracking that nut is apparently the new thermal assisted optical element Fujitsu's developed, allowing for an ultra-tiny sub-hundred nanometer optical spot size, which in turn should enable recording on the one terabit (not byte, let's not get crazy here) per square inch level.
But Philips and Sony were only willing to rejoin if the forum used more of their technology possibly even Sony's magneto-optical recording method instead of Matsushita's phase-change design.
Sony's Balanced Optical SteadyShot has been perhaps one of the camcorder industry's greatest innovations in recent years, delivering a much smoother handheld picture by moving the entire lens module, rather than specific elements, to compensate for shake.
In April, Matthews lured Donald Smith, the president of Nortel's optical broadband unit, to head Mitel.
Chatter, 40, now works on patching his device into Lucent's optical interface to create an optical on-ramp.
Iceberg A-43 was detected using the United States Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Optical Linescan Sensor on 5 May.
This obscures only 1% of an optical astronomer's view and is twice as efficient as a mercury lamp.
The SETI Institute's optical and radio searches can only detect life capable of technology more advanced than ours.
The 9900's optical pad is replaced with a camera that lays beneath the glass and senses the movement of your thumb.
ENGADGET: BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9981 hands-on (video) Mobile
The new Razer DeathAdder's optical sensor was upgraded from 3.5G to a cutting-edge 4G infrared sensor with improved performance and precision.
ENGADGET: Razer DeathAdder adds 4G optical sensor, available now for $69
It uses the US firm's optical frontplane but adds on its own backplane made out of non-rigid plastics, and then sells the part to device-makers.
This, though, does not affect the system's optical properties and it can, indeed, see small, faint objects that are near large, bright ones.
The team describes its breakthrough results and their applications in a paper published today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express.
ENGADGET: Infrared holography lets rescuers see people through walls, fire, walls of fire (video)
While purists may lament the A99's lack of an optical viewfinder, the camera's OLED EVF was plenty sharp and color-accurate to our eyes.
"We need very accurate high resolution images over a very wide field for the Dark Energy Survey" says Dr Peter Doel from UCL's Optical Science Laboratory.
The live system of an SSD-powered Modbook Pro operates without any moving parts (aside from its base system's optical drive), dramatically decreasing the chances for data corruption or loss.
ENGADGET: Modbook Pro to launch with SSD storage, up for pre-order October 3rd
The advantage of the rival NTT technique, says Saruwatari Masatoshi, a senior researcher at the company's Optical Network Systems Laboratories, is that it uses only a single light source.
The LSM-100 is also equipped with LG's Optical Character Recognition technology, which converts scanned text into a Microsoft Word document that can then be edited and manipulated as the user sees fit.
ENGADGET: LG announces LSM-100 Scanner Mouse, saves valuable desk space
Yet, despite the superior specifications of my own solid shooter, I was often quite jealous of the shots she was able to achieve, thanks in no small part to the RX100's optical zoom.
ENGADGET: IRL: Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 and the full-frame RX1
In addition to negating the need for a mouse pad except for personal expression, the new mouse's optical technology will make it a good alternative for PowerBook and iBook owners who don't like those computers' built-in trackpads.
When listening to music, the sound of the PC was obliterated by a battered old Sony amp and speakers plugged into the motherboard's optical port via an equally battered MiniDisc player with optical-in that functioned as our DAC.
ENGADGET: How-to: Build a multi-talented HTPC for (roughly) $1,000
Infinera's optical routing gear is built around an all-in-one optical networking chip--which it calls a Photonic Integrated Circuit--that shrinks down the work done by a hodgepodge of parts in boxes from other vendors onto a pair of chips smaller than a fingernail.
It's even got an optical sensor that works like a laptop's touch pad.
Supporting the D600 is Nikon's heritage in optical excellence, more than 70 NIKKOR AF and AF-S compatible lenses for maximum versatility.
ENGADGET: Nikon unveils lightweight, full-frame D600 DSLR -- hands-on and low-light samples (video)
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