[Qion]

Apple's new machine is impressive for obvious reasons, but does it really fill any preexisting gap in our market? And at that, a gap larger than the difference between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro? (I feel the iMac is in a class of its own and doesn't really compare to either machine. No interchangeable graphics, etc.)

The way I see it, the MacBook Air is slower, less practical and substantially more expensive than the baseline MacBook. In all reality, you're paying an extra $700 to loose 400MHz, an optical drive and two pounds. Both computers' screens are exactly the same size and resolution, and that being so, it's not like having a completely new form factor.

The MacBook Air isn't even a proper multitouch device; the features it has, such as rotating pictures and scanning through Safari tabs, can be implemented in every Apple laptop since the Intel switch.

Can anyone enlighten me?