Saw that. Of course the SDD option puts the price over $3K. For now I'll stick with my faster, slightly thicker and heavier MacBook. It's a great laptop.

Wow. The ad made me laugh out loud... that giddy, world-just-rocked kind of laugh. That's seriously cool.

Oh, and my birthday is Saturday.

Oh, you were just excited by the envelope. You mailmen are all alike. ;-)

That "open and it's on and running" thing? Yeah, it really does that.

I don't think there's ever been a time when Apple even tried to compete based on price (unless you were a student). I see it as being like the difference between a Mercedes and my Mazda 3: the Mercedes has all sorts of bells and whistles, including leather seats, gold-trimmed instruments and controls (I assume), and the ability to drive itself, but for double the price it really doesn't get you from point A to point B any better. Unless you need a car that drives itself, as many in the Dallas area apparently do.

Apples always look really cool and stylish, though. And I know enough non-artists and (non-)non-techies who rave about them (not at them) that if I had the extra money just lying around, I probably wouldn't mind trying a computer that drives itself, for a change.

I don't think there's ever been a time when Apple even tried to compete based on price...

Well, actually, Apple's line of iMacs, MacBooks, and the [now-defunct] eMac are based on a price-point strategy. However, even that strategy doesn't include being the lowest priced in the market segment. In those lines, Apple tries to make the argument that on a feature-for-feature basis, and including such intangibles as TCO and security, those computers are, indeed, the best value, even if they also carry the teensiest (in the eye of the beholder, of course) premium for the design and "cachet."

That skanky Air is making my laptop act all sad and depressed, and she is still smaller than most of the other PCs on the block. Not everything is like what you see in the magazines...

Who knows when the Air will start acting like Brittany after a three day party binge with BFF PAris.

Air v1.0 is something you would have to buy knowing its limitations in the real world haven't been worked out yet (the single USB and lack of an optical drive are the two most noticeable in the current environment, and carring around a portable optical drive and USB hub kind of negates the size/weight advantages of the laptop). The optical drive problem may take care of itself in the long-run as more and more audio/video apps go to Internet download and flash drive for their data, but those two absences will be annoying for the price as things stand today, status symbol nonwithstanding.

I'm much more excited about the Time Capsule concept, with its ability to wirelessly backup a full Mac network through the Time Machine software, though it does say all computers on the network have to be upgraded to Leopard in order to work with the new hardware. This advance almost makes up for Apple not putting a program similar to Windows XP's System Restore on the first four versions of OS X to begin with (in which case we wouldn't have seven machines right now in the office that need upgrades to Leopard to make Time Capsule work. But it's probably not a bad idea to upgrade the things now, since they're all on Motorola chips and it wouldn't surprise me if the future 10.6 upgrade is targeted for Intel-based Macs only).

Jon, that's hilarious. It was bound to come to that, and I expect to see new exclusive clinics catering to notebooks with eating disorders.

John, you're right that there were more useful things mentioned yesterday during Jobs's keynote, but the Air was definitely the séxiest. And, really, I doubt that even he envisions it as a ubiquitous replacement for everyone's notebook, and certainly not as a desktop replacement. But if you have a good handle on how you'll be using your notebook and whether the missing OD is a problem for a given meeting or journey, I sure can't see any downside to having the luxury of leaving the extra weight and size at home. I do wonder what kind of security risks come with Remote Disk.

Agreed it's a fun thing to play with because of the new technology (though apparently Toshiba came up with a flash drive laptop last year), and the lighter weight would be an asset. But the office's widescreen G4 MacBook is already way lighter than my HP laptop, to the point that it's really not a burden, unless you start loading down the laptop bag with other hardware like card readers or secure Cat 5 cables (not all hotels/motels are wifi capable yet, and for government purposes, motels have to put in wired Cat 5 systems for security reasons, so MacBook Air couldn't be used by some people right now without a Cat 5 adapter for the lone USB port).

So it would be fun to own, like the first generation iPhones, but until the rest of the technology catches up to it, it will have certain annoying shortcomings, just like the first generation iPhones. On the other hand, I can get a Leopard upgrade and a 500 GB or 1 TB internal hard drive for our server (we're running out of space right now anyway) and use Time Capsule as an external hard drive for the server, instead of having to put in dual internal drives, and any other Mac with 10.5 or better can also use it as for storing data that isn't kept normally on the server's hard drive. Not nearly as flashy, but a lot more functional now, and at $499 for the 1 TB version, about a quarter of the price of a stripped down Air MacBook.

Perhaps we can agree with what one observer said about the MBA: it's a niche product, and it's comforting to know that Apple has the financial and creative capacity to bring such products to the market, while not neglecting its primary product lines.

This is semi off-topic, but via the Brothers Judd blog, here's an article from pcworld.com on the mindset differences between a Mac an a PC user.

“...it's comforting to know that Apple has the financial and creative capacity to bring such products to the market, while not neglecting its primary product lines.”

Truer words were never spake.