The original "Air" was announced by pulling it from a manila envelope to brag about web mobility.
This Air is being marketed as a Macbook Pro, and by historical standards of Macbook Pro it is a compelling refinement with brilliant power at 1/2 the cost in adjusted $.
Superb display, sound, ergonomics, battery life, advanced performance by every measure. Technically and aesthetically it is defining the current laptop market.
And it's also oddly detached from any sense of professional or personal purpose or ethos. Apple has utterly lost he ability to mythologize its offerings since the passing of Jobs.
I will take technically superb over cultishly great!
But as my venerable 2012 MBP, acquired as an Apple Refurb for 1000$ when the Retina was introduced, still goes well, with handy (for IT) built-in ethernet port, and tendency to get uncomfortably hot when I download old Marshall McLuhan and Alan Kay talks to my archive, this new Mac makes my appreciate my vintage one more rather than want to replace it.
It has a full sRGB color screen and my $19 genuine Apple wired earpods sound great even though the mini-phono jack gets scratchy and sometimes drops a channel and then they fall out of my ears.
Has my lust for the sexy new diminished? Yes. But this new generation of Macbook can never be exciting. It's just excellent kit, sadly.
It's good the same way that mp3s made music boring by completely detaching the art from the moments of its creation.
Now the onus is totally upon the individual to create the enjoyment of his scene, individually, appearing as a little animated avatar is a vast complex of platforms too immense to be affable. It's like we're being sold doors to the Mall of America, but while I'm impressed with the portal, I already have several doors to malls, and have seen all I care to of Target and Walmart.
Things are too good.
It's a true tragedy of the commons!