You don't think, as an apparent engineer, that the wish to carry a low-mass notebook would result in needs that would exclude an armoured case?
On the contrary: it is overtly obvious that light weight and ruggedness are self-contradicting requirements. Yet we always seem to then be surprised when we still hear of people trying to have their cake and eat it too...why?
Don't get me wrong - I have several Hardiggs in which I put the Apples in, in situations where I would put my Dells into an ordinary laptop bag - but especially with a deficiently engineered machine like the Air where so many things are done for the sake of tactile and stylistic superiority, such cases defeats the object of carrying a light machine.
It doesn't defeat the object, per se: it satisfies a different requirement (namely, of successful transport without the slightest cosmetic mar).
The point is - and I made it before - Apple's choice of materials which is driven by marketing / design-only concerns than engineering merit or even an ability to adequately take a non-babying everyday use without looking like **** after a while (which is one of the reasons why Apples *do* get babied, because it is very clear to most people of reasonable intelligence that it would look like **** if they treated it like any other laptop).
Point accepted as is without interest in disputing. If it doesn't meet your requirements, then don't buy it ...
Or if you do buy it anyway, then when it only lives up to its design goals instead of exceeding them, figure out if you have any real basis to complain.
If you're impressed...
If on the other hand you're impressed with Apple...
Actually, its none of the above.
The MBA is merely an interesting design that is targeted to a certain niche, which puts a higher priority on asthetic elements than other design factors. For them, "pretty but fragile" may very well be a perfectly acceptable trade-off...and for you, something different is more optimal. Gee, we're all different (Stop the Presses!).
However, since it is still a "1.0" revision product, it should be intuitively obvious to any designer that it hasn't necessarily been magically been matured somehow so that mainstream users with broader and different expectations (such as its relative degree of operational toughness) will also all be satisfied and in bliss. It would be a wonderful world if all '1.0' product adopters realized this, but that never happens.
In any event, my point has been that once one commits to a decision, one then should be expected to live with the consequences.
...and please note that this has nothing to do at all with "Brand".
...Apple...brought in more automation to offset the chronically bad human QC - and a resulting manufacturing procedure which has to strike an ultimately somewhat non-optimal compromise between finished weight, strength and ease of volume production...
There's a relevant article in the March 09 issue of
Mechanical Engineering (journal) in regards to the western challenges in Quality for contemporary manufacturing in China that you might want to read.
-hh
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