The MacBook Air appears to me as the "portable Cube". Very pretty, very expensive. Both are/were worth their money, but still: expensive. So the Air will likely become a cult object like the Cube. Let's see if it also becomes a commercial success unlike the Cube. As for the optical drives: I don't see them going away so fast like the floppy drives did. For data, yes, they might become obsolete. But people have CDs and DVDs for their music and movies and want that somehow connected to their computer park. Björn