I can't recall there ever having been an Apple laptop - or for that matter any Apple system, that elicited as passionate a debate as the MacBook Air. Yes, the Cube was controversial, and to some degree the oddball "20th Anniversary Mac" as well. The IIvx and the PowerBook 5300 generated a lot of press, but not a whole lot of disagreement - they were fairly universally panned. Steve Jobs' decision to eliminate the floppy drive from the original iMac and rapidly phase it out on other Apple systems was controversial, but I don't remember it causing the dialectical schism that the MacBook Air has, with Mac Web articles appearing on the same day entitled "Why I Will Definitely Buy A Macbook Air," and "Why I Won't Buy the MacBook Air" respectively and many more aligning themselves in similar fashion.

Some MacBook Air cheerleaders are accusing MacBook Air skeptics of being Luddite whiners resisting the march of progress, while some critics of the Air accuse Air aficionados of being gullible fanboys praising the emperor's new finery.

Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle of all this. The MacBook Air is not what I hoped Apple would bring forth in a subnotebook. I wanted a linear successor to the 12" PowerBook and PowerBook 2400c - small laptops that were still capable of serving as primary production computers with only relatively modest compromises necessary, with a reasonable degree of connectivity, expandability, and upgradability. The MacBook Air fails on all those counts and several others as well, and cannot serve as a desktop substitute without working around massive compromises. Consequently, it's not for me.

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