After Steve Jobs closed shop for the evening last night at MacWorld, Apple stock prices plummeted. Almost 10 points in a day. Some speculate it might be attributed to the new Macbook Air, a cutting edge, sexy little number that might be a little too ahead of it's time.
The Air, which boasts a ludicrous .16" thickness at its smallest point, also boasts a whopping $1800 price tag. Alas, skinny is beautiful, but like most women I've dated who are that hot, unfortunately there's not much on the inside. To be precise, no ethernet connection, no super drive, a smaller hard drive, and not even a visible battery. My office mates groaned a collective confused cave-ish grunt, grumbled, and went back to work.
Whether it's gorgeous, elegant, and envy-inducing is no longer the issue; unfortunately Apple has given us Pavlovian responses when it comes to their products. In this case, the problem might be Jobs' full confidence in a still burgeoning technology. WiFi, while making vast leaps in the past few years, still isn't as pervasive in the US as in other countries, still has trouble pushing large files, and still gets quirky when jumping on to large private corporate networks who are set up for hard line connection.

But it must be acknowledged that Jobs' insight is uncanny. With Web 2.0 kicking into full blow, the next few years will be chock full of internet based software, file storing, and speedier downloads. I'm sure the CD drive will be as archaic as a floppy disc to my intern in a few years. Which brings up a good point: Years and years ago, when I purchased my first Mac, it lacked a floppy drive. The point was clear: that technology was dead. But even if that logic was carried over, the CD/DVD is at least on the ICU cart, and it's still alive. So much so that Apple has developed a parenting system (to be installed via CD- HA!) that will make any optical drive in the vicinity a surrogate drive— you can literally co-opt someone's old tech, and then bluetooth and WiFi your way into spinning-disc pleasure.
But where Apple might not get off the hook is the non-removable battery. That's been pissing people off for years, and it's particularly troublesome on a machine that now carries your life and not just a few tracks to rock out with. Danger! Danger Will Robinson!
It's design is very, very smart. Like a Stacy London makeover, Apple has given the Air extraordinary sleek lines to accentuate it's figure, and even tapered the fat parts of the machine (a mere +/- .75") inward to hide it's waistline. It even redesigned the MagSafe cord to hide under Air's rump.
I'm sure this conversation will seem absurd in two years; WiFi will be as widespread as cell phone antennas, and we'll all be laughing about the time we didn't trust ol' Stevie's new fangled technology. I know I'm right. Why? Because Apple's stock is already back on the rise. People are already putting their money where their foot was.