I received my MacBook Air in the first shipment. I saw the concept as being "air", as in "not wired." As such the lack of ports made sense conceptually. In practice, a pain, but that's the pain we early adopters seem to crave. 
(A secondary thing with the SSD and no optical drive was: "no moving parts." Even the multitouch trackpad is the first time I've decided to go without a mouse, another annoying moving part gone.)
The Air concept is very interesting to me. In the next few years chips will be commonly available to support wireless USB, wireless display port (think HDMI), and wireless expansion bus (UWB); chips for wireless broadband (WiMax and 3G) and wireless audio and peripherals (Bluetooth) are already available. There is even interesting work in wireless power delivery. Increasingly applications will be delivered over the air and via solid state memory -- rotating media is dying. The point is that future Air's could have fewer and fewer ports until a day when it is pretty much sealed and very durable, modulo cooling.
Much like the evolution of the original Mac, PowerBooks, and so on, the early adopters get a bum deal -- we have to suffer the compromised vision, the painful lessons of the market, the slings and arrows of revision A firmware, and so on. But we must love it, because we continue to buy the latest and greatest. Our complaints are part of market feedback to Apple...
The MacBook Air is pretty much exactly what I expected: overpriced, underpowered, chock full of compromises, and a bit buggy; and dealing with the space limitations of the SSD and the single USB port reminds me of the days of the 128k Mac with floppy swapping. But it is also sleek, cool, visionary, and the start of something important. It takes a stand at starting the "Air" interface to the world and the rejection of moving parts. It takes guts and a rabid willing audience to launch something this compromised -- Apple did it's part, will we do ours? ;-)
...though the moving part I'd most like to get rid of is the FAN!
(A secondary thing with the SSD and no optical drive was: "no moving parts." Even the multitouch trackpad is the first time I've decided to go without a mouse, another annoying moving part gone.)
The Air concept is very interesting to me. In the next few years chips will be commonly available to support wireless USB, wireless display port (think HDMI), and wireless expansion bus (UWB); chips for wireless broadband (WiMax and 3G) and wireless audio and peripherals (Bluetooth) are already available. There is even interesting work in wireless power delivery. Increasingly applications will be delivered over the air and via solid state memory -- rotating media is dying. The point is that future Air's could have fewer and fewer ports until a day when it is pretty much sealed and very durable, modulo cooling.
Much like the evolution of the original Mac, PowerBooks, and so on, the early adopters get a bum deal -- we have to suffer the compromised vision, the painful lessons of the market, the slings and arrows of revision A firmware, and so on. But we must love it, because we continue to buy the latest and greatest. Our complaints are part of market feedback to Apple...
The MacBook Air is pretty much exactly what I expected: overpriced, underpowered, chock full of compromises, and a bit buggy; and dealing with the space limitations of the SSD and the single USB port reminds me of the days of the 128k Mac with floppy swapping. But it is also sleek, cool, visionary, and the start of something important. It takes a stand at starting the "Air" interface to the world and the rejection of moving parts. It takes guts and a rabid willing audience to launch something this compromised -- Apple did it's part, will we do ours? ;-)
...though the moving part I'd most like to get rid of is the FAN!
