I love Apples - having owned one in some form or another since 1982. And I love the idea of the MBA. But it doesn't strike me as a serious road warrior ultralight as much as an attempt to make ultralights interesting to average consumers. Apart from the backlit keyboard (great feature), there is sufficient hassle factor on the I/O stuff (sorry, when I am sitting in an airport lounge in Narita I may not be able to do the whizbang wireless I/O that Apple proposes instead of old fashioned media,and I like on board DVD drives) to make me stick with my Sony TZ.

Now the details are out. The MBA is a no-go for me. I like a full featured notebook with less weight, but NOT at the sacrifice of features (large HD, more DRAM, DVD....). And in typical Apple fashion on pricing... :td::td:

PS: I am a cross platform user.

For my none business travel, I had envisioned something like the E-PC (I reckon the next generation will be very good) and in some ways, the Air is a very high end super luxury version of this. There's no doubting it's an amazing piece of kit but I would personally prefer one of the existing, more functional Mac Book models.

Anyone else think this thing will be remembered as the second coming of the Twentieth Anniversary Mac? Incredible design, some elements way ahead of their time, but not that appealing to a significant market?

Just cancelled the order and got him a MacBook instead. More bang for the buck.

Nah, the Twentieth Anniversary Mac was priced at about 5x a normal computer. If it flops the thing it'll be closest to is probably the G4 Cube. When I saw this yesterday I went "Oh, at least it doesn't cost more than the cheapest MacBook Pro". But I just as reasonably could have said "Hey, it costs a lot more than a more powerful MacBook."

You're totally right, this is more like the cube, a great product looking for a market.

3 words:

Flower Power iMac.

Has anyone actually physically seen, touch, played with one yet at the apple stores?

Posted on the other thread - my son was at the 5th Ave Manhattan store and no demo units out yet?

Flower power + cube = electric koolaid (aka 'acid')...LOL

Nice, thanks! ^

I will probably get a MBA soon. I've been carrying 3lb linux boxes around for 100K miles/year and would like a unix OS which is supported by a real company. The MBA seems to be what I want.

The other Apple notebooks are 5+ lbs, which is not gonna work.

I'd have been happier with a 2 lb, 10", 90% keyboard solution, but I can live with this.

That thing was hideous. We actually had a Blue Dalmation model here at the office, which was not quite as bad but still pretty silly. We were looking for the iMac with CD-RW, needed it quick and those two were the only colors in stock. Oh, well.

BTW, I actually own both a G4 Cube and a Twentieth Anniversary Mac. No, I didn't pay anywhere near full price, for either. :p