I think of the MacBook Air mostly in terms of the times when I don't need to travel with my full laptop. Lots of my quick meetings and short trips I could carry just the tiny MacBook Air. That would be sooo nice. I wonder if Bootcamp will work on it.

I just answered my own question. Yes it will do Bootcamp, so that tiny little machine can be a portable Mac/Windows box for me. Wow. Once they start shipping I'll have to take a serious look at them.

Once they start shipping I'll have to take a serious look at them.

Can you jump on IM?

Lots of my quick meetings and short trips I could carry just the tiny MacBook Air.

Yes. After the drooling, my more serious thought is that if I had a job with lots more traveling and conferences and whatchamacallits, it would be a great travel machine -- with the assumption of having something heavier that stayed home.

That's actually the thing I find most interesting about it, as I've thought about it more through the day. The whole business of bootstrapping DVD installs off another machine makes it very clear that the assumption is that everyone comes with multiples (and that you'll be ripping your CD library to that other one) -- there's never been a generation of laptops that's done that quite so explicitly before, even though there have been plenty that have come with less power or less stuff or annoying swappable drives or docking stations, all of which are sort of implicit statements that this thing we're selling you isn't quite completely what you want. This is more like, "duh, of course it isn't, but we both know you have those umpty-twelve other machines, and now you don't even need to plug into them." It's really a huge change in assumptions.

I think a lot of the PC ultraportables make that assumption as well with the non-inclusion of optical drives and the like. As someone who's been computer-poly for way too many years I forget that lots of folks only have one machine.

As someone who's been computer-poly for way too many years I forget that lots of folks only have one machine.

I suspect that the target audience for this thing is mostly poly, and has been for a long time -- but the change in marketing to not even doing that bit of wink-wink pretending that it can be a self-sufficient machine is what I find interesting.

Proof that the new gig has some folks with a sense of humour:

Co-worker B: Karl, do you prefer Emacs or vi?
Karl: Actually, I'm pretty much bi-textual. I'll go either way.
Co-worker B: (without missing a beat) San Francisco's a good place for that. (sotto voce) Or so I hear, anyway.
Karl: I have a mild preference for Emacs, but sometimes you just need something different.
Co-worker B: It's genetic, really.
Karl: Is this going to turn into a nature vs. nurture argument?
Co-worker B: Probably. Did you get enough keyboard time as a child?

(Note: I am /not/ out to my co-workers, and I am not aware of any queer folk in the office. Doesn't mean we're not here, just that none of us seem to be loud about it.)

Bwah! That's an awesome conversation.

I've come to realize, I don't need the shiniest. I mean, I think this 'puter is 2001 vintage and I got it in 2003, and it is only that upgrading it further is problematic, and stuff is starting to fail on it that prompts me.

So the new fancier stuff is good news to me because it means the refurbs will be a better deal for me. I mean, christ, I'm still on dialup.

I think I've decided against a mini. Who knows, maybe getting a fancier-to-me laptop will result in me actually moving off dialup!

I made a b.org bookmark on my iPhone home screen. It's so cute!