It's the thinnest laptop going, but that's it as far as the MacBook Air's form-factor magic goes (Though that is a spectacular "it"...) It's not even the littlest Mac, on at least one axis--the 12" PowerBook retains that honor.
It's this fact, that the MacBook Air is really just a super-skinny
MacBook rather than a genuine sub-notebook, that irks BoingBoing's
Joel Johnson:
"Why did Apple choose to extend the dimensions of the machine beyond those of the keyboard? (The Macbook Air is exactly the same depth and width as the vanilla Macbook.) They have guessed that Mac users in search of a lightweight laptop were not willing to give up any more screen size. That a thirteen-inch widescreen is the minimum comfortable display for a laptop that will be used for five hours at a time. That a smaller screen would make the Macbook Air less capable as a surrogate for a larger Macbook. Maybe they're right."
It looks great, but it's hard to not think of it more as a work of art than a working machine. Which is fine, if that's what you wanted. But
Apple's latest announcement, however exciting, has me returning not to its site, but to the one for Sony's true subnotebook, the outrageously-priced but relatively uncompromising TZ.
The Macbook Air is Not a Sub-Notebook [BB Gadgets]
