@kzin
Thanks for branding my arguments an idiocy.
If the shoe fits ... and both of the messages I've replied to certainly indicate that it does ...
Keep carrying around whatever crapbook netbook you have that won't handle about 90% of more demanding computing tasks while your eyes bleed in the miniscule screen that you cant even move up close to your eyes a la iphone and I ll keep the air that can handle pretty much most any task you through at it. Oh and guess what? I am going to have a much thinner bag along with me and probably a lighter one too, for sure it's not gonna be fugly.
Your bag is definitely bigger than my gadget bag, by simple necessity: my maxpedition colossus gadget bag/armed-courier bag is too small for the MBA. Even my larger gadget bag (maxpedition sitka) wont hold your MBA.
And when I go for a walk and listen to music, look something up on the net, check email, check my gps map, all that in my pocket with my iPhone I guess you ll have to be wearing that maternity suit to carry your netbook along. Good luck.
Nice strawman argument. Too bad you're comparing apples to oranges (what was that I said about idiocy?). Lets try apples to apples (so to speak).
Non-pocketable vs non-pocketable; pocketable vs pocketabl:
MBA vs netbook; iphone vs G1.
First, the non-pocketables:
1) As already stated, your MBA doesn't even fit in my gadget bags. You're going to have to put it in a big ol' dinosaur bag (it might be a THIN bag, but it still will have too much of a footprint for me to be willing to carry it ... and my small gadget bag still has room for not just the netbook, but also the Mathias folding USB keyboard, USB hard drive, power adapter for the netbook, some USB cables, a book or two, a note pad or two, pens, etc. ... and I barely notice it when I'm carrying it ... even if your MBA in a wimpy little sleeve turns out to be a little lighter, I would still notice carrying it, just from its sheer over-bloated size ... and it still wont have the necessary accessories with it).
2) I'd love to see you comfortably/safely hold your MBA such that you can do thumb typing on it. I can do that, while riding on the bus/train (where there isn't an adequate tray for setting the device down), with my Dell mini-9/vostro-a90. Another reason why I went with a netbook, or would want 7"-10" apple tablet -- perfect size for that.
3) It can do everything I need my non-pocketable mobile device to do*, and I can in fact hold it at a distance that makes it quite comfortably readable. (* read rss feeds, email, IM, full size/full feature web browsing, coding, taking notes in a meeting, multiple ssh terminals for my text based servers, VNC viewer for my non-text based servers) At the same time, it doesn't force me to spend extra money to give it capacities I just plain don't need. $200 for everything I need vs $1800 for lots of crap I don't need.
Now for the pocketable/phone:
A) My G1 can do everything you listed for your iPhone. (GPS with Maps, check; listen to music, yup; check email, definitely; look things up on the web, yup)
B) Plus, I can sync its file system to any random device that can mount a USB hard drive. Last I checked, the iPhone and iPod Touch don't retain the USB Mass Storage mode that earlier iPods had.
C) I can also expand its storage without buying a new one. No such luck on your iPhone.
D) I can ALSO have a 80x21 ssh screen on my G1 (almost a full standard 80x24) for monitoring my servers at work, restarting software if there's a failure, adjusting parameters if something isn't quite behaving correct (and, I have in fact done that; I was at the other end of the country to visit my mother for her birthday, and a server crashed ... I fixed it from my G1, while riding in the passenger seat of a car on the freeway, with my loaner macbook* from work back at my mom's house, because we were on our way to go out to dinner; if I had been stuck with an iPhone, we would have had to cancel/postpone my mother's 60th birthday dinner, so we could turn around and go home for me to fix the downed mission critical server; relying upon Apple's mobile products in that situation would have been completely unacceptable and/or inappropriate). Further, I can utilize that full 80x21 screen and type at the same time -- typing doesn't obscure my application's usable area, because the G1 has a physical keyboard, like all devices should.
(* this was several months before I bought my netbook)
There are exactly 4 things my current set up can't do, that I really want them to do:
1) the netbook doesn't have a tablet mode (the flexible tablet/netbook shown here would be kind of cool, but I'd settle for a convertible tablet version of the vostro-a90/mini-9 ... as long as it ran ubuntu). Of course, neither does the MBA.
2) the netbook doesn't run OS X ... well, it can, I'm just not ready to cross the line into hackintosh territory... but even though I'm fine with Ubuntu, I'd still prefer OS X. But there are no current (legal) OS X devices that are of a proper size for my needs ... so even though the MBA does run OS X, it's still less adequate for the job than an ubuntu netbook. In the balance between "lumbering dinosaur vs agile kestrel" balanced against "OS X vs Ubuntu", the agile kestrel running Ubuntu wins, even though OS X is a better overall OS than Ubuntu.
3) the netbook and the G1 both need more battery life. They're adequate for my commute needs, but I'd get nervous on a long flight or train ride.
4) the G1 doesn't do tethering (of course, neither does the iPhone ... and both for the same reason: the carrier doesn't want them to). This could be mitigated if the netbook had internal 3G (and, again, not a win for the MBA here, as it doesn't either).
Some people despite all evidence just want to stand truth on it's head...
Your "truth" appears to be completely out of touch with both reality and the evidence.
I've listed several things that your MBA and iPhone just can't do, but that I routinely do on my two devices. And of the things my devices can't do, only one of them (battery life) is preferable on your devices.
An iPhone is way too limited for what I need in a pocketable (and WAY too limited for what I need in a non-pocketable device). And an MBA is overkill (in size, in price, in system resources) for what I need in a non-pocketable device.
I wont go over what Apple would need to change to get me to buy an iPhone: we all know they're not going to do it. But, what Apple would need to do for me to move away from an ubuntu netbook is: provide me with an Apple product that is able run desktop OS X apps, have a 7"-10" touch screen (prefer 8.9"/9"), multiple USB Host/OTG slots, a Display-Port slot, 1GB+ of RAM, some form of SD card support, at least 6 hours of useful battery life, and has _OPTIONAL_ internal 3G/4G capability. Bonus if it's a flexible/foldable tablet (like the one concept: 13" fully open, 9" when used in half-screen mode), and/or has a finger-friendly GUI over the desktop OS X (like the current rumor speculates about a 3rd flavor of OS X), and/or if it can run (via CPU emulation) iPhone apps, and especially if it can be used as a Kindle replacement (using the same file format as the Kindle). If it only has a virtual keyboard, I can live with that, since it's a much bigger screen than an iPhone, and it has USB ports (so I can rig an improvised netbook format for it, if _I_ so choose).
But, without a device in that general category, Apple's product offerings are insufficient in the mobile arena (pocketable or non-pocketable).
Add a 256 GB SSD option and there you go. The price can stay the same.
