Yes, I've heard of Occam's razor (for clarity, Agathon's spelling is a variant, also acceptable, spelled for the man himself; he didn't misspell the word.)
You've obviously heard of Occam's razor but you don't know how to apply it. The case is: a publicly owned for-profit corporation introduces a new, appealing product with numerous limitations over similar, less expensive products they sell, while offering almost no advantage in comparison. Apply the razor: The corporation has created the product seeking additional revenue from it's existing customer base.
That may not be the case, but that's Occam's razor's answer. That the corporation foremost motivation in releasing a product of this kind is recognition that "people are different" is absurd on its face.
Manufacturers of personal computers have a problem today. For the so-called "typical" or "average" uses of a personal computer, the time-to-really-need-an-upgrade window is huge. Circa 2000 it was at least eight years, as anecdotally proven by my wife's G4 Cube. The 450 MHz model. I've been telling her we should get her an iMac. She has a certain design sense and refuses to give up the Cube. A couple months ago, she was complaining it was getting slow. I have a Core Duo Mac, and was like, Ha, of course it's "getting slow". But our eldest child has started to use the that Cube, and turns out she'd junked it up quite a bit. I backed it up and did a fresh install of Tiger. I have a 2GB RAM Core Duo Mac. I figured I was in for a grind. After I reinstalled Tiger on the Cube, for Web, email and word processing, it's not slow at all. So what's the really-must-upgrade window now? It could be 15 years. Apple, has a relatively small, core base of users making up most of their Mac market-share, though that share is growing; their personal computer line cannot survive selling to their share of the market, growing at the pace at which it is, a new computer every 8 - 15 years. It has to be more often. So "gimme-gimme" technology like the MacBook Air makes good marketing sense for generating more revenue faster. That's no "conspiracy theory". That's the fact for today's computer manufacturers: they need to create ways to sell more computers more often.
If your Back to My Mac works for you that's great. A large number of people can't use it to connect to their Macs from outside their local area network. The problem may be insoluble, at least for some long while, as it may require routing configurations no one will make for you at your points of access. (There's some giant security hole, too, but I'm not calling that out, as those things don't tend to make me get all aquiver, and would not affect my use of the feature, if it did consistently work.)
It takes me two seconds to connect an external display and speakers to my notebook Mac. If two second, maybe twice a day, is worth, for you, owning and managing two Macs, your time is either worth a lot less or a lot more than mine -- I'm not sure which one, though. This will take a bit longer, hang on...
Okay, that's an A4 envelope, right? A MacBook fits just fine in an A4 envelope. The fact is the MacBook is 8mm thicker than an Air. You're definitely male; only a male considers 8mm equivalent to around 1.5cm. I'd love to see your magic bag, that a MacBook with the same footprint but 8mm thicker takes up so much more space in your bag than an Air.
Multiple personal computers which one uses to do the exact same things are anathema to efficient personal computing. They're good for business, not for the consumer. Sure, everyone is different, sure, but we can make some general statements about efficiency in personal computing.
All that being said, I like the aesthetics of the Air. I wouldn't have pre-ordered one because I type all day long and I have too try the keyboards for myself. But if there were a 160GB drive in the Air, and the keyboard checked out as I suspect it does, I would buy one . . . Well, in about a couple hours here, according to the gossip. There's no other issue with the Air not soluble. But 80GB internal storage is not enough. Now tell me, seriously, they couldn't have engineered a 160GB drive into the Air? Of course they could have, in the same weight -- I'll give you an extra ounce, max, on weight for the taller drive -- and dimensions. They didn't? Why? Because for me, as I'm sure for others, that makes it perfectly usable as a one-and-only computer, with the external optical, which can be left behind most of the time.
I'll give you the thing this much of a chance. I'll go have a peek at it this morning. My tax refund went into my bank overnight -- for some reason I had next week stuck in my head. So if this thing is so fantastic I'm willing to point my iTunes and possibly iPhoto library to a second external USB2 drive, and then let Time Machine back up both the MB Air and the second external USB2 -- which I consider a bit of an extra hassle, but okay -- to my primary drive, a FireWire and USB2 model (I refuse to back-up over WiFi, even n, thank you very much; you're always forgetting the 1.5GB you bought or ripped or whatever and you wait and wait and wait) . . . Anyway, if it's so thin and light and great, I'll buy one -- no, not the SSD model, no way; too much money for a commodity part with a price that will drop way too fast -- and let you know.
If it turns out it's a hassle and won't work as a one-and-only Mac, I can always take it back and lose a little. Or sell it and lose a little more. But no more than a local hotel weekend holiday, I suppose. However if it's pretty obviously about the same rig as a MacBook, I'm not going to lose a penny for an experiment I know from the outset won't come off.
You're out of your tree, bro. Why would I want a MacBook when I don't need most of the stuff it offers? I live where wireless is ubiquitous, and I never use the optical drive on my Powerbook. The MBA is smaller, thinner and weighs less. Even a MacBook takes up quite a bit of space in my bag. The MBA takes up no more space than one of those manila envelopes. You do realize why Apple's ads feature those envelopes, don't you? The MBA isn't much bulkier than a senior thesis or a couple of decent sized term papers.
I don't need a huge hard drive either. Back to My Mac, have you heard of it?
This is unsupported rubbish. How do you expect anyone to believe this ridiculous conspiracy theory? Not everyone wants a single computer. I like my iMac at home. It has a nice big screen and keyboard. I don't want to use my portable at home, because I'd have to hook up speakers and a monitor to get it how I want it. I prefer a desktop machine. Other people may share their desktop machine with other family members.
The moral of this story is that people are different. Other people have different needs and priorities than you do. You have absolutely zero evidence that this is some kind of conspiracy to sell more desktops. The MBA is aimed at people who need a desktop and a light portable.
Ockham's razor, have you heard of it?
Do you think the Moon landings were faked as well? Or that space aliens shot JFK?
Your problem is that you simply cannot accept that not everyone is like you. Hence you feel the need to invent risible conspiracy theories like this.
