Folks, what people are saying is a massively increased perceived speed is wholly the SSD. That's the secret sauce, and it is nothing that Apple did short of them choosing to use quality parts which they did not invent. The 2 gb Ram limit is neither better nor worse than the last generation.The SSD doesn't have a real benefit on how many apps can be run simultaneously before the laptop slows down unless you count the fact that it allows virtual ram to be accessed faster.
There's nothing magical here. What is magical is that Apple has made people aware of the importance of hard drive access speed in usability of a computer. The processor is completely overrated, as evidenced by the fact that the Core 2 Duo is still plenty fast for most everyone out there, and people are saying that the new macbook air flies.
I agree with you. The NAND Flash and attaching it to the board less a standard SATA-II connector is making it faster. It will probably end up being a lot faster than SATA-II as it will not have the bandwidth limitations built into it.
However, there is some change to the functionality allowing the 30 hours of standby instead of people shutting down and turning on with each use. The instant on isn't available via a standard SSD either... so there is some software integration making it better...
Those who already used an SSD will not see a drastic improvement in speed initially, but I guarantee you the drivers running the control of the NAND Flash can improve the speed further with additional OS X updates. For example, the OS X updates have taken the v 2,1 MBA's SSD and made them about 2x and more faster than when released.
I have been hopeful Apple would do this for a while. I think I guessed this as much as a year ago as a way to speed up every Mac. My thought of what Apple would do is use maybe 64 GB NAND Flash in every Mac soldered to the board.
The purpose would be to run the OS and applications. Then, these Macs would also have hard disk drives or SSDs to allow media and other files to be saved via a cheaper medium. I believe that is what will happen with ALL of the other Macs as each one gets updated. It makes so much sense. It also takes a lot of apps and a huge OS to fill 64 GB NAND Flash.
With the MBA, the whole storage solution is the NAND because Apple is trying to lighten up the load, reduce space requirements, and increase battery performance.
Overall though, it is the NAND Flash (similar to SSDs) that has made it so incredibly fast for all coming from HDDs. The price is finally low enough that Apple can make these amazing Macs. It is going to get even better, as Apple will keep improving drivers too.
I hope people who buy these MBAs realize there are much easier and better ways to speed up Macs than just using a new Intel processor that's smaller, faster, or a new model. In all honesty, it is the drive controller that is the bottleneck on computers today, so reduce the limitation of the bottleneck and the benefits can be remarkable.
Apple needs to work on improving software, integrating more RAM standard, use faster RAM, taking advantage of GPUs with more and better use of OpenCL by making it easier for developers to include use of it in applications, provide better OpenGL drivers/performance, and the list truly goes on and on. About the least update necessary is the CPU, and Apple knew it and gave us all the update we needed rather than the update we wanted (which would have provided a worse experience overall).
, this is exactly the point I was trying to make.
