Totally depends on what tools you are using. Sure, when I'm at home working on a light webapp running nothing but Emacs, Chrome, Postgres, and using, for example, Python as my server-side language, 4GB of RAM is more than enough, hell I could get by with 2GB no problem
You'd need 2 GBs for that ? My Linux server with about 384 MB of RAM runs that web/db environnement without breaking a sweat, with a load average of about 0.1, and that's not even a quarter of what runs off of it.
No, seriously, people overestimate their computing ressource needs these days. Xcode is pretty light, Eclipse ran on computers from 10 years ago, so did Netbeans. Tomcat has been around and hasn't changed much from its 5.0 release, back in the early 2000s.
The MBA is fine for running the tools you describe and would make a fine software development station for the needs you expose, don't ever doubt that.
By "run everything", you can't possibly mean run games at "higher than medium" settings, nor edit lots of HD footage in something like Final Cut Pro. Though that's not what YOU use YOUR MacBook Air for
I'd argue the needs I described are shared by much more people that the needs you claim aren't filled by a MBA. I doubt Final Cut Pro movie editing is anything but a small niche of what computer buyers do with their machines and "higher than medium" settings is not something I use to describe gaming. I value games for their playability, not how they look on my screen. Of course, I come from the era of EGA graphics and Adlib sound systems, when games were about gameplay.
Still, the MBA does fine with iMovie and I can play Civilization IV at full screen on my external monitor of 2048x1156 pixels without breaking a sweat. It is a very capable machine, contrary to what you believe. Use one and see for yourself before you diss the thing. I can understand why you wouldn't be interested in one, I can't however understand the venom you spit at the thing.
please, please, P...L...E...A...S...E - Can we have an integrated Cellular data chip
Get a USB adapter. That way, your 2000$ laptop won't be tied to a single carrier the way Apple does 3G in its devices. I'm fine with my iPhone and tethering, I'd rather Apple sell the MBA on the cheap and leave the 3G option up to the users.
It's not like you can't use a MBA over 3G networks right this day (or any other Mac for that matter).
Wait, so MacBook Air has a TN panel? That makes no sense, the iPad 2 has an IPS panel...
Anyway, I'd like to see backlit keys and an IPS display before I buy a MBA
Very, very few laptops have IPS displays. The only one that comes to mind is the HP Elitebook with the DreamColor screen option (the standard screen on it is a TN panel).
Apple does not install Flash Player on newer machines, so this is not a problem.
Try
youtube.com/html5 or
ClickToFlash or other
HTML5-Safari extensions!
Youtube is not the only source of content out there and until all video provider sites are HTML5, computers without VDA framework support will be slower, run hotter and have lesser battery life than those with VDA support.
And HTML5 won't be on all video sites until you can graft DRM on top of it. Think of the paid-for streaming providers like Hulu.
BTW, my MBA runs Flash without any problems. I don't need Apple to pre-install it for me.
You obviously know nothing about
OpenCL. OpenCL is not hardware dependent. OpenCL programs can run even on old 300 MHz PowerPC processors, if someone writes a OpenCL-compiler for this platform.
And you obvioulsy don't understand what a GPGPU API is for. What good is running code through an API whose purpose is to offload your CPU by using ... your CPU. It makes no sense to emulate OpenCL in software, other than providing OpenCL on computers without a hardware implementation.
In the end, you haven't achieved the purpose of OpenCL, which is to offload the CPU, since you haven't offloaded the CPU at all.
The point is, the Intel 3000 HD on Mac OS X cannot run OpenCL code, so it's up to the CPU to do it.
You failed to even counter my points. Your attempt is only about dismissal, which proves my points are very valid.
