The word on everyone’s lips, in everyone’s heart, and on everyone’s shopping list is THIN. The new MacBook Air, or as some of us fondly refer to it, the SliceBook, has taken our collective breath away. The whole Keynote at Macworld Expo 08 in San Francisco was lean and mean. Even Jobs was looking extra thin. I suggested he’d been on a diet as a prototyping experiment, a sort of proof of concept for the new MacBook Air, testing to see if you could be so thin, and still wield power. But that’s not what was so impressive. What impressed us about this product introduction wasn’t what you’d think. Sure, the display is bright and sharp. The weight is half of the sibling MacBook. The keyboard is a merging of the best of the MacBook Pro with the clean comfort of the MacBook not pro. All these are wonderful, but what strikes us as the most attractive feature, and maybe I’m crazy or have suddenly uncovered some odd fetishistic tendency I heretofore wasn’t aware of in myself, but the thing I like the most is the little latch door to the USB and Micro DVI ports. It has a solid, almost automobile like quality. The kind of door-slamming thunk that you expect to hear when you close a luxury car. And this little door is the Macintosh equivalent. It speaks of solidity, of solid state, of durability, and reliability. And Apple really got this one right. 

Andrew Shalat - 200 Words on Design