it only needs two things for the next macbook air.. tablet screen + superdrive..

I honestly haven't missed having a DVD/CD drive at all!

We needed to use remote disk once to install microsoft office after the MacBook Air was bought and haven't needed it since.

What do people do all the time that needs a disk drive... it's not like the Air is a gaming machine where one is swapping games disks ?!?!

Hogwash. Mac OS X already has everything it needs in it to make a brilliant tablet OS, even a small UMPC formfactor one. Remember, it's got InkWell as standard for handwriting recognition, and the whole UI is (as I often have to point out to multibutton addicts) still geared around a single pointer. Perfect for being wholly finger-driven.

Axiotron proved they didn't need to add much to a normal MacBook Pro to turn it into a tablet -- a GPS and a software keyboard and that's about it, really.

There's so much wrong here, I don't know where to start. I call bullshit on your hogwash.

Unless you'd like to use a pointer to use a tablet computer, you try using your finger to navigate OS X, with no keyboard or mouse. The iPhone OS proves that with limited screen real estate and inaccurate finger input, you can't achieve 90% of what a fully mature desktop OS can. And if you think a tablet will be the same screen size as a MacBook, I'd like to see how strong your hands are to hold it for any length of time. Plus, Inkwell is not designed for finger input and there is no way a Mac tablet will come with a pointer.

The Axiotron Modbook merely proves my point. You can't just whack a touchscreen on a laptop and call it a tablet. It's a convoluted and bastardised MacBook with little or no practical advantage over a normal MacBook for everyday use.

Edit: I should add that in time, Apple have shown they will overcome those obstacles should they produce a tablet form factor computer.

I've been an advocate of tablet computing design ever since I saw Apple's "Knowledge Navigator" video, which to me still represents the perfect computer. In the mid-late 90's, with the assistance of Alan Cooper (one of the gurus of interface design & human-computer interaction) I designed a fully touch driven budget-oriented tablet aimed at school students, called "dPad", a part of a much larger electronic school system. The interface was designed from the ground up, and prototype testing showed it worked exceptionally well, and the user could accomplish most of what we expect from a normal mouse-and-keyboard handicapped computer today. Alas, the venture capitalists canned the idea because we refused to budge from using PDF as the document standard.

The sooner we can dispose of the keyboard and the mouse entirely, the better.

I wish Apple had kept Firewire on the MBA. USB for hard drives is so wrong especially because it's so slow. May have made things more practical for SuperDrives and they didn't have to hack the USB port to deliver three times more power.

MBA sells out very quickly around here and apparently in the US as well so the market is definitely there.

iPod touch and iPhone are your "news reader" gadgets, you don't need a full blown computer for that purpose. Anything much larger than that would not be as practical since you'd need a bag to carry it. Also, with the Star Trek-style PADDS, you don't see people carrying them wherever they go in the series do you? They don't have pockets either but that's beside the point :P LOL. The crew members only use PADDS either in their quarters or at their stations.

Oh... sorry, my geek is showing :P

all i want is an intel 12" powerbook.

Should make an eeepc-esque macbook. I'd buy that in a flash.

That's great if you want to take the half-baked, Microsoft UMPC approach. Apple would be more inclined to try and work out what the best methods for the platform would be, just like they did with the iPhone. It'd require a massive rethink and every application's front end to be retooled.

Agreed.

if apple came out with a tablet i would sell all my macs to own one. nuff said.

I agree, but.....

I put it to you that there's no way you can replicate the functionality of a current KB+Mouse based computer system with only a multi-touch interface, without losing a huge amount of productivity. The multi-touch can complement what we already have, but you're going to need voice recognition and/or some other kind of high-level interface to be able to match the current systems without the keyboard and mouse.

I don't think many people would use a tablet computer as a primary computer....

It is a correct assumption that I haven't had my hands on an MBA or an iPhone so I apologise for making comments regarding weight and usability of which I have no hands on experience. I have played with an iPod Touch and really love the touch screen. The input of text however is fiddly for those of us with chubby digits, so as a device for rapid text input for say mobile journalism or moblogging it falls a bit short. I like to use two thumbs for data entry and find that the Blackberry and Palm devices are excellent for two thumb typing.

I have updated the image to show how I think an enlarged iPhone style keypad could be much more useful, and for readability although much better than your average phone the iPhone is still a squinter and certainly not ideal for the optically challenged. The larger screen would make it a better experience for continuous reading, web browsing and watching video.

Some have commented that the tablet idea has been tried and failed, I have also been a doubter but now believe that the tablet was too far ahead of its time. Previous attempts have been too large and heavy and the touch screen technology wasn't advanced enough. The technology is getting close for it to be viable now. The thickness of the Macbook Light I have proposed might be a fantasy at the moment in order to fit in a full operating system, but with rapid miniturisation of processors and effective cooling techniques being developed who is to say its not possible in the near future. I mean look at the original iPod to the Nano, that has just been 5 or 6 years in its evolution.

As far as the DVD argument goes I think flash storage will probably replace it from a software installation point of view, and for archiving, probably units like Time Machine will handle that end. That is until the internet is fast enough to become everything. Storage, applications, processing...the whole shebang. But that s anther story. See CAN WE GET OUR HEADS INTO THE CLOUD? on blog.known

Funny, the Macbook Air is everything I want (or should it be, don't want) from a Laptop.

It's light. So light.

It has a full sized keyboard, and an enormous trackpad.

A good sized LED screen.

I really don't want a superdrive. I used it once remotely for iWork and some Adobe gear, and haven't touched it since.

It runs silently, and is the best 'on the clients lap' notebook I could've hoped for.

I don't want a touch screen computer, that's what my iPhone is for.

I don't think many people would use a MacBook Air as a 'primary computer' either... it's really not what they are meant for.