So the “leaked” keynote was wrong on pretty much every count. What we got was a vastly improved Apple TV, interesting flexible video rental options, a neat network attached storage device, and the sexiest damned laptop I’ve ever heard about.
The MacBook Air will get a lot of ink for being so thin and so light, but the revolutionary thing about it is that it’s the first notebook from a big manufacturer that’s got just two moving parts: the keyboard and the hinge. Instead of a hard drive, the top-line MBA has 64GB of solid-state memory. It can’t crash, it can’t get jarred in a crash, it can’t wear out and die (well, it can, but it’s way more rugged than a spinning disk).
No one will use the thing as a desktop replacement, but if you’ve got the $3000 for a travel machine (hey — memory’s not that cheap), this one looks like a real sweetie. It ships in about two to three weeks, and expect a lot of people to line up and try the thing at the Apple Store.
January 15, 2008