It's a nice wish, but Apple has never been big on 'options' in the Steve Jobs era. His whole approach when he first came on board was to dramatically 'simplify' the product line ... and that approach has served the company well.
Now, if we're all weighing in on our opinions, I personally would LOVE a MBA with and 11.6 screen, even if that meant the 13" was gone. Assuming of course, as Scottsdale hopes, that the 11.6 MBA is not 'dumbed down' - that it is a premium machine with as good as specs as they can possbly pack in.
A widescreen 11.6 air would be very similar in screen size to the old powerbook 12", and somehow we thought that was fine, and I think while it might feel 'small' at first in comparison to the laptop you're using now, like all things, you'll quickly adjust and it won't feel as cramped as you thought it would.
Actually, the MBA is more of a niche product sorta like the Mac Pro. If Apple wants to price it higher, I do believe options at least in areas of RAM, SSD, and CPU would be a huge selling point and allow Apple even greater margins. The higher margins would allow Apple to sell more and make it worth the lower sales of the MBA.
Of course, you're correct, if Apple wants to take the price lower, it needs to keep the no BTO options. If Apple lowers the price, it will need to leave BTO options off the table. With the iPad taking the netbook market on, I don't see a need for a budget ultraportable Mac. In June 2009, I believe it was a good move for Apple to lower the price points. Now, I believe it would be better for Apple to reposition it as a luxury product. If a luxury product, the options would lead to far greater success, higher sales, better more niche specific products, happier high-end users, and amazing margins.
Maybe a modified ExpressCard /34 that Apple allows batteries for?
These /34 batteries would pump power into the main battery faster than max use so you could have a dozen of these you could charge and plug while away from power sources
This is a really good idea. I always think Apple needs to come up with a "standard" bay port of some type. One that allows an optical drive, extra battery, express card, USB ports, firewire port, ethernet port, extra hdd, and etc. I really like the express card slots, and I found it terribly disappointing when Apple eliminated them from the MBPs (however it didn't affect me as I don't own an MBP). Dell's V13 even has an Express Card slot and it's an aluminum bodied ultraportable. Such a slot would allow everything from batteries, to extra USB ports, to FireWire, to eSata, to etc.
I wish Apple would allow a standard method of expandability across its Mac notebooks. I do believe many users would buy extras too. For example, if it had a proprietary bay, it could sell all sorts of devices to fit in the bay. With 13" Macs wasting space for an optical drive that most people find completely useless 99% of the time, eliminating the optical drive and allowing the users to buy several bay expansion devices makes happier users and happier shareholders with huge margins on these devices.
Anyways, great idea with just a simple express card slot...