Apple Does it Again… or not quite?

Holy cow. Have you guys seen the new product from Apple? A three-pound MacBook that’s roughly three-quarters of an inch thick.

Apple geeks have been watching for a while for this laptop. Originally, the hype was surrounding the solid-state hard drive it was supposed to have. In reality, the MacBook Air can be ordered with an optional solid-state 64GB hard drive, but comes standard with a traditional 80GB hard drive.

Now, this laptop is a great plan for a “grab-and-go” laptop, but there are a few downsides which are not so easy to overlook. For one, there are only four ports: MagSafe AC, audio out, MicroDVI, and USB. It wouldn’t be so bad because this laptop isn’t designed to be the only one you have. But here’s the kicker: no internal optical drive. This is sure to generate a lot of flack.

Cool as it is, I’m sorry to say I would not buy this product right now. Sure, it’s super-thin and a great second laptop, but for a base price of $1799, I really have to see Apple at least revise the no-optical-drive issue. Didn’t they learn with the PowerBook 2400c?