Although initial estimates for sales of the Air may have been on the high side, this cut back does not make this phone a failure. The Air is an incredibly well made phone that is tough, easy to use and beautifully engineered but comes with some compromises due to Apple’s inability to design and engineer in solutions for the cameras and battery. These compromises are seen as a result of its weight and physical dimensions. But they are mainly as a result of Apple’s lack of technology.
Apple spend a lot of time on honing the production process, reinventing the wheel (their own modems and processors) but little time on really new technologies. They have always been good at taking other people’s technology and making it their own without really advancing the curve. Eg. The battery. There are newer more power dense solutions out there, but Apple apparently cannot scale it or there are patents they have to negotiate. Whatever the reason, they have chosen not to use it, even though this might have made the Air more acceptable.
Steve Jobs once commented to the effect that we should make the technology work for us, not the other way around. And here we have the Air which is an example where Apple are trying make us fit the limitations of Apple’s effort to innovate instead of going out and finding and using the technology to fit our needs. The Air is nearly there but Apple need to really innovate technically and not spend their time on production, honing supply lines and making millions of generic phones that barely evolve from year to year as they slowly iterate from one pointless thing to another. (colors, polished aluminum, bigger bumps to accommodate bigger cameras, faster, etc. etc.).