Straight off the top - the new MacBook Air is an amazing achievement in industrial and computer design. It is freaky how thin and light this machine is. And it definitely hits the "Apple sweet spot" of being completely and utterly lustworthy. Witness:

MacBook Air: This is one sexy machine

But, in order to achieve such a thin design, Apple had to make several trade-offs. And it is here, that I think a lot of sales are going to be lost. You should read John Gruber's initial impressions about the machine - which in general I think are pretty spot-on. What I'd like to add is that the biggest flaw of the new MacBook Air is its lack of a 3G wireless capability built-in. I'm talking about something like EVDO, HSDPA, or heck even WiMax. This machine is so easy to travel with, that it is meant to be used on the go. Unfortunately, we don't (yet) live in a world where WiFi is ubiquitous (I'm typing this on WiFi-less Caltrain, for example). And while it's true that a 3G wireless card could be added on via the USB port - my guess is that it'll be hard to make such a card fit in the MacBook Air's oddly recessed USB port, without some sort of USB extension cable.

And that whole scenario is very un-Apple - everything is supposed to be simple, built right in. I would have thought that Apple's partnership with AT&T would have come into play here - Apple could have built in the right radio to work with AT&T's 3G network. Or, if the iPhone could be used as a Bluetooth modem, that could be a viable way to get non-WiFi network access to the MacBook Air. But it can't, and so the MacBook Air is left in somewhat of an odd position - it is born to travel, but it's going to be a pain to get it on the Internet when mobile.

My guess is that this massive gap in the MacBook Air's feature set is due to two things:

1. Due to the small size of the motherboard (which Jobs showed off in the keynote), there probably just wasn't room for a 3G chipset. And due to the design requirements of the case, there probably wasn't room for the external 3G antenna, that most 3G-enbaled PC laptops come with.


2. And regarding the iPhone, it seems like in order to get AT&T to offer an unlimited data plan, Apple had to design the iPhone so that it minimized Edge data use. This means that the iPhone is aggressive in attempting to join WiFi networks, and that the ability to use the iPhone as a bluetooth modem has been disabled.

I do like some of the novel ways that Apple designed into this subnotebook solution - the new Remote Disc software seems pretty clever (it even supports net booting). When you do need an optical drive, the MacBook Air's external SuperDrive is amazingly tiny. And the new multi-touch trackpad seems to work quite well (in my limited testing today), and once you work it into your muscle memory, could be a great addition to this machine.

All-in-all, I can't say for sure that I would get one. If it was a lot cheaper, then it would be much easier to pick up as a second machine, to be used when portability is required. But at nearly $2,000, that is the budget that most companies set nowadays for a corporate laptop. Thus, going the MacBook Air route would mean that this would be my only machine. Something worth thinking about, but probably not something that I'd go for, unless I was working somewhere that was totally flush with cash.

-Andy.

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