No, I haven’t changed my mind and bought one. But it’s interesting to see from the various blogs and reviews starting to show up that my take on the Air was spot on. I.e. if you have the money and love having stylish stuff (and fly business class) the MacBook Air is enormously compelling, if you don’t then not so much.
I once travelled from Sydney to Brisbane on business (Economy class, as it happens) carrying a Quadra 840AV (that’s a large tower for those of you who don’t remember 1993 Macs very clearly). I had access to top-of-the-line laptops at the time, so I must have had a reason. Clearly I wasn’t then in the demographic that the Air is aimed at, and despite my change of profession and increase in salary since then, I’m still not.
A bunch of Apple bloggers have pointed out that you can pretty much always bet against the internet “consensus” view on major Apple product announcements. E.g. the general consensus that the iPod was a piece of junk, or that the Cube was fantastic. I can’t be sure enough of the accuracy of my recollections (I remember thinking the first iPod was underwhelming, but then the first iPod didn’t sell all that well), so I’ll refrain from commenting further.
One final comment, Gruber and the Hansson (the inventor of Ruby of Rails btw) both remark that the MacBook Air is faster than a top-of-the-line pro Powerbook from two years ago as evidence that the MacBook Air is “fast enough”. And after all, couldn’t you run Photoshop on those? Sorry, but anyone who seriously uses Photoshop would reply that NEXT year’s overclocked desktop is still not fast enough. There’s a difference between “could in a pinch” and “would want to”.