I had a chance to check out all three at the Naperville store. A few impressions:
-I was surprised by how classy the gold version looks in person, especially the outer shell. I ordered the space gray version, but it almost looks drab next to the other two colors, as it is a matte finish and the black keyboard blends in with it much more than the other two colors. Also, the trackpad on the silver and gold versions are a shade or two different than the casing, so they have a slightly more two-tone appearance on the keyboard area. The space gray trackpad matches the casing more closely than the other two.
-I opened up youtube in 10 different tabs, and had it playing videos on each tab. There was no slowdown.
-The build quality of these units was exactly what you would expect from Apple. It definitely is a quality piece of engineering.
-The speakers were louder than expected. They are significantly louder than the ones in my girlfriend's 2013 MacBook Air 11".
-no issues with the keyboard, but it is very shallow.
-UI response time was excellent, and I saw no lag while navigating the OS.
-The system boots up in 6 seconds.
-The screen seems dimmer than the one used in the MacBook Pro line. i Use my MacBook Pro daily, and the first thing I attempted to do on the new Macbook was increase the brightness to what I felt matched my normal experience at home. I was surprised to discover it was already maxed out. There were no Macbrook Pros next to the Macbook, so I couldn't do a side-by-side comparison, but the Ipad Air next to the Macbook was visibly brighter when both were set to max.
I think the naysayers will be wrong about this laptop. The type of customer this laptop was built for will be very pleased with it.