First I have to link to this excellent first impressions review of the new MacBook Air.

To go along with this review I want to point out something that shows how amazing the marketing team at Apple is.  Under the highlights of the MacBook Air there is this point:

This may not seem amazing, but if you think about it, Apple is saying that the MacBook Air is superior to the competition because it doesn't have an optical drive.  The ability to access another computers drive is nothing new, the way they are doing it may be.  Regardless, the thought of having to borrow another users computer to play a CD is a little silly, especially when you are selling it as a feature.  Right now, I bet there are people convincing themselves that this is a much needed feature, and an advancement in hardware technology.

Last week when talking with a good friend of mine who loves Macs and hearing once again how Apple is a hardware company I decided that this was a wrong assumption.  I believe that a more accurate classification is that they are a hardware design company.  I am not sure if I can make a good case for this, but I do believe that Apple has come to a point where they are better at designing the way their machines look and feel than in what features they include.  For example, the MacBook Air is sexy looking, but it lacks a lot of the features of a similarly sized more squared laptop from Fujitsu.  Another example is the battery, they sacrificed the ability of a user to replace a battery on their own so that the MacBook Air can have a pretty bottom side.

The ability to design such great looking machines is what draws me to really want a new MacBook.  But then I look at the specs and see that I could get something with more power and sporting the same hardware brands for much less.  However, I still want the shiny machine.

I am super excited that they included an SSD, but am sad to see some of the other stuff left out.  It doesn't matter anyway though, I never planned to own a MacBook Air.