From a production standpoint, why is the MacBook Air so expensive? Are the components that expensive compared to say the alu MacBook? You're not talking a whole lot of differences between the 2- unibody construction, same GPU...
I would imagine the MBA has a bigger profit margin than the other notebooks, which is fine if that's what Apple wants to do. But if they could get the starting price to $1299, that would be really nice IMO. The alu MacBook offers more power at that price, but not the same portability. To be able to pick between the 2 at $1299 would be great.
I guess to realistically introduce a $1299 MBA, they would need to cut out the keyboard backlight and use the lesser quality (but still LED-backlit) screen from the MB. But there might be a lot of takers at that price.