do not expect miracles
Compare it to what the competition has on offer in 13" packages and it looks hopelessly outdated.
My Wife's got the Rev.C 1,86GHz model, and I (the geek) think it would have deserved an SSD, but honestly it's perfect for her needs. Sure everything would run quicker on an SSD/more RAM/higher Ghz, but guys&gals, lets be honest. What can you expect? What should you dare to expect?
Let me explain.
As someone here noted, Apple has a higher profit to revenue share than the rest of the industry, which we might as well dub the Windustry. Also any company, however big the cash reserves are, needs to fulfill market expectations. What this actually means is that for a product to fit into Apple's lineup (which for a company of its size is unusually coherent) it has to either reach at least the uniformly expected profit-to-sales ratio (money makers) or to sufficiently strengthen the entire lineup (supporting products).
In the Windustry, sexing up the specs is one significant method to compete against otherwise comparable competitors. In Apple Garden it's different. The last ten years of Jobs have divided the user field in two (warning: caricature and gross exaggeration and oversimplification follow): Those who use a mac at work and relax at home with a netbook/PS3 and those who use a PC at work and relax at home with their macbooks and minis.
Therefore, there are two types of macusers. Those who will get sufficiently close to state-of-the-art performance, and pay a hefty premium for it and those who'll get slightly outdated, last generation hardware, for a lesser (but still existent) premium. Face it. In every case you'd get the silicon cheaper from anyone else, who's not bundling it with MacOS.
And do not make the mistake of thinking that Apple does not know how to be competitive. It does not want to be competitive if it can be avoided. That's the only way to be super-normally profitable.
For those who buy a mac for personal use either because it does not remind them of work, It looks better, makes them stand out, fit's into the decor - performance is not an issue. They are lured in by the way the product looks, by the promise of no virus/trojan-hassle and most importantly, by the promise of simple beauty. Those who enter seeking design are not prone to exit seeking performance.
IMHO the MB, MBA, MBP, MP and iMac (forget the pads, pods, phones and broaches) all have their cleverly thought-out market segments to which they cater. You want power 24/7, get the MP, You want occasional power (so that compiling your holiday DVD doesn't take ages, or you don't mind paying a premium to make your computer part of your avant-garde decor) get an iMac. If you want mobility, but don't need power, get the MB. If you need that power, get the MBP, and if the most important thing is that it's 700 grams less to carry, get the MBA (If you don't need connectivity and optical, that is).
A typical example of Apple's will to keep it like this is the MacBook (Alu), which was very quickly discontinued and rebranded "Pro" (admittedly with minor alterations), why? If you look back, there often was not so big a performance gap between the iBook(g4) and the PoweBook (G4), naturally the iBook was intentionally crippled, but many cost-conscious people know how to uncripple it. Color was the significant difference. In a mac-world where the size of your virtual penis/breasts is defined by the (easily indentifiable) hardware you carry, color is the key element. The same naturally carried over into the intel era, with the basic macbook (white, yuck), "blackbook" (black) and macbook pro (silver). And so Apple (I still do not REALLY know why) launches a silver MacBook, sturdier, stylier, lighter, with clearly the best performance to date.
As we know it stayed short-lived and some have (with more or less humor involved) taken to calling it the "collector's edition"... Fact remains: The MB(Alu) 2,4 Ghz is still the MB with the highest performance in a MB to date.
Before I go to my final comments (I'm not as bored as you might think), I'd like to point out that one anomaly is the current 13" MBP. I've stated it's ancestry above, and IMNSHO, It does not belong into the MBP line any more than the 12" PB ever did. The MBP 13" is to be seen as the MacBook Deluxe, not really a part of the MBP proper-lineup. If you don't believe me, check the price-hierarchy and tell me I'm wrong.
Back to the MBA:
And this might hurt some feelings and (hopefully) crush some misdirected expectations...
Ultraportability is seen as important in two market segments, one growing, one waning. The growing segment is
the Prada lady, the stylish female professional who needs her computer to go everywhere but it has to be light, it may in no case require a carrying bag tagged Targus, and should fit in with the designer apparel. The waning segment is the
weight conscious geek who gets extra kudos for showing off that his miniscule computer can do everything the other persons 3 times bigger monster does.
Of these the MBA's intended market segment is ... well I need probably not say.
So I'd not expect the MBA's performance to ever rival that of a MBP, and at best to in some cases hold it's own against the MB. Do not expect Apple to renew the MBA before it is a blemish on the rest of the product line, because anything which has the sales volume of the MBA IS a supporting product. And if this is a tune you don't want to sing to, bug out ASAP, either up the ladder to 13" MBP (which is the 2nd lightest mac) or make the jump to Windows, because this is how it is, and will remain until Apple decides to make all our computers mac's (At which stage they need to rethink their strategy).
Thanks and apologies.
Pekka
