Ha ha, Walt. What a jerk. Not that there's anything wrong with that - its my name after all.
But, man, he bolted after the interview. Doesn't he know we value TUAW's collective opinions more than his own?

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wow, either you're taller than i expected, scott, or uncle walt is shorter. either way, interesting that he mentioned the multi-touch gestures as something that surprised him. i was thinking the same thing: my personal view is that the macbook air will eventually be seen as an interim machine in apple's line... sort of a hybrid that pointed the way to where apple was going. much like they (rightly) declared the floppy dead years ago with the imac, this is the first shot declaring the end of the CD. take the two things together, and i think apple can see the future, and it's going to be completely wireless, downloadable, and completely multi-touch. bring it on, i say!

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I think Walt somewhat controlled that interview...

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It was good to see that at least Mr. Mossberg was fair in his assessment of the Keynote, and taking note himself of the newer trends that Apple is beginning to introduce in it's products in adapting them from others.

Overall, I can't see the MacBook Air entering into the public sphere with the kind of widespread acceptance the Apple is looking for, at least now, given the MSRP of the notebook.
Also, given the limited capacity of it's standard HDD (80 GB), using optical media (4.7 GB on DVD) would seem as a more reasonable alternative to digitalizing every bit of content for mobility.

With a battery life of 5 hours, the MacBook Air isn't for watching Movies, listening to Music, or for other like activities. The truth of the MacBook Air is that it's work-centric, considering Mr. Jobs new philosophy in realizing a 'wireless economy' in which future computing itself works, in the most strict and restrained sense.

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McNulty is always hardcore rocking the hawaii shirts huh.

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Zzzzzzzzzzz.....Look guys, I'm sorry, but listening to Walt Mossburg drone on either here or on his site is just downright painful. Aside from the fact that he's a total bore, he is a very "safe" reviewer and rarely offers anything insightful other than what's already propogated into the mainstream media.

Regardless, he is really just painful to listen to in this fast paced digital world. And ya know, I really WANT to enjoy his reviews so I keep revisiting him because he's popular I guess, but I'm always disappointed.

Emperors clothing if you ask me.

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Great job on the interview, Scott. Seems like he really wanted to be "different" (shake off that notion that he only gives the mainstream opinion that so many people seem to think), and his way of doing that was to simply be contrarian. People like that are very, very difficult to deal with, and you really did well.

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Dude. I *hate* watching needless video and listening to needless audio. Plus, I'm at work anyway. Can someone post the big "surprise" and save me 3 minutes?

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Boy, this Walt was annoyed. Obviously he hated the whole interview...

mk

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scott seems like a nice guy. walt on the otherhand must have had a macbook air shoved up his a**.

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Nice job with the interview. Mossberg didn't strike me so much as jerky or annoyed, as *cautious* and unsure how to approach an interview with a tech blogger. The hostility between establishment media and bloggers who cover politics is evident and the subject of much interesting commentary, but tech journalists/reviewers and bloggers have the same issues learning how to regard each other. What may be different is that tech journalists understand that there isn't much division of their audience between online vs. other media, so they have to find a way to play nice. That's what I saw - Mossberg trying to play nice, while still being protective of his establishment privilege.

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Mossberg: "It's very hard to predict what Apple's thinking about."

Yes, oh Karnac, who would've predicted a movie rental model for iTunes and Apple TV? Who would have predicted updates to the iPhone? Who would have predicted a sub-notebook?

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Mossberg is a fuddy-duddy. Scott was trying, but response from status-quo is tame at best. Or rather, frankly nothing, zip, nada.

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"Watch and learn"??? Oh, for goodness sake, just tell us, at least in brief. I read a blog like this exactly to save me having to trawl through lots of stuff before knowing it will interest me or not. So save the teasers, which are just annoying. Tell me roughly what it contains, then I'll be able to decide whether to devote whole minutes of my life to watching it! Thanks - this is intended as constructive criticism by the way.

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At 13" the MacBook Air is NOT a sub-notebook.

It is light and thin but a sub-notebook = smaller than 12".

This product is right for business & elite use as a secondary or tertiary machine, but the completely wrong answer by Apple to the real consumer & enthusiasts request for a 12" PowerBook replacement and 10" sub-notebook.

Shrink the PowerBook 12" or MacBook to a smaller footprint using a smaller & better matte (!) screen, stick to regular thickness, replaceable battery, standard notebook drive standard connectors and more I/O ... and I guarantee you it would be on my desk in two weeks.

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