This past weekend I finally got my hands on a MacBook Air. I wasn’t prepared. I thought I’d like it; I thought I’d be impressed; I assumed that I’d want one. But wow - I had no idea how utterly attractive the thing would be. I didn’t realize just how light 3 lbs is, or how thin the thing is, or how fantastically it all works together.

There are so many little, tiny design choices that are just sooo correct, and that I wouldn’t have known I wanted until I saw them, that it’s just amazing.

Now, I’m not about to give up my MacBook Pro for the little guy. I love screen real estate (lots of it) and while the MBA keyboard is spifftacular, it’s not the perfect laptop keyboard that the MBP’s is. Still, it was an incredible piece of hardware, and I want one. Or two. It’s much more impressive in person than in any ads for it, which is saying a lot. If you haven’t touched one, held one, then you don’t really know what the thing is like.

This morning I read Wil Shipley’s first impressions. They’re very Shipley-esque (read: funny and interesting), but the first one was exactly the feeling that I got when I saw it up close:

It feels really nice, like a pebble. A large, smooth pebble, from a stream. This shape speaks to me, like the MOTOPEBL did, except that was a crappy phone and not a really nice computer.

He also says this, which is not really MBA-specific, but certainly a problem I’ve love to see solved:

Jonathan Ive should design a laptop bag as beautiful as the Air, that just can contain the machine, a power cord, and a Wireless Mighty Mouse. I’d be in heaven. Nobody seems to have addressed the “I want a small, slim bag that can still hold a power cord without having a giant wart in the side” market. Like, duh, bag designers, STOW THE POWER CORD ABOVE OR BELOW THE LAPTOP, not STICKING OUT THE SIDE WHERE IT CREATES A TENT AND LOOKS UGLY AND BANGS MY KNEE.

To that I’d like to add a hearty “Amen!”