I attended MacWorld and held the MacBook Air in my hands and I have to admit that it is one fine piece of engineering. I initially thought that there was a lot more material under the laptop hidden by the curved edges a la their previous version of the iPod Nano, but it really is remarkably small. Just like a folder. Their marketing campaign with the manila department envelope is just brilliant!

However, I don’t think it’s practical. It doesn’t have built-in Ethernet, has only one USB port (Apple used to be all about the Firewire), and a headphone jack. I can think of multiple situations when I would need more than one USB port.

A full backup on Firewire takes a long time and isn’t even worth a try over the network (which will hog the existing on USB port). If you’re backing up your data, you wouldn’t be able to do something like load photos from a media card reader without a USB hub (data throughput crawling). And with the integrated battery (replaceable at any Apple store for $120), it’s going to be more difficult to troubleshoot power issues.

The MacBook Air is fine as a second computer, but not as a primary one. In my mind, it’s like buying electronics from places like Bang & Olufsen; it’s more about the form, than about the function at a higher cost premium. But perhaps that’s why I’m not their target customer; I’d rather buy a cordless phone from Costco than from them.

I’m curious to see what the second generation will bring though. I’m hoping they’ll bring Firewire back.