No CD drive is no problem. ...or at least it won't be.

When Apple first launched the iMac with no Floppy Disk drive everyone thought they were mad! How would people transfer files between home and work/.school?? At that time everyone used to carry floppy disks around.

Yet Steve Jobs and Apple always look a year or two ahead and it seems likely that, just as nobody now uses Floppy Disks, nobody will use CDs/DVDs within the next couple of years.

Software/Media can all be delivered online. And Apple's very clever stop-gap of being able to use another computer's CD/DVD drive wirelessly is very clever and should bridge the gap until then.

"We don't skate to where the puck is, but to where its going to be"

David, Essex, UK

I don't see what the big deal is with the lack of an optical drive. This laptop is not meant to be one's primary computer and you can always use the external drive at home (I can't recall the last time I used my drive on the road).

When it comes to laptops size does matter.

michael rothe, Toronto , Canada

"£300/$600 more in the UK than the States the usual profiteering at the expense of the UK customer"
The UK price includes VAT, which is reclaimable for registered buyers, the US price EXCLUDES sales tax which isn't reclaimable by anyone. It is wrong to make direct price comparisons.
As for it not having a CD/DVD drive, it can connect to any other mac wirelessly and use theirs.
Anyone with half a brain will rip their DVDs to play them off the hard drive. I never take DVDs away with me, playing them drains the battery faster anyway.
Anyone in Business Class+ can plug their laptop into a power outlet, so no problem.
As said earlier, Apple has no obligation to pander to the bottom end of the market and people wishing that Apple would drop their prices to suit someone else's budget is plain daft.

Tony Green, Peterborough, UK

How can anyone say 'style over substance'? Portability is surely one of the most fundamental attributes of a laptop, and I expect most business travellers, students etc will prefer carrying around the world's thinnest and lightest laptop, not to mention one that runs both Windoze and the Mac OS natively. Style AND substance, surely? Carry on the good work Apple... Laptop-envy will get you nowhere Ian!

Mat R, London,

I was interested until I saw there was no CD drive.

Most games and software comes on a CD. And I use a laptop for watching DVDs while on flights or at airports. This is insane.

I appreciate that Apple are trying to push people towards downloads from their itunes site, but not having an internal CD drive means it's nothing more than the Paris Hilton of laptops - expensive, slim and pretty, but ultimately useless.

Irwin Fletcher, Dubai,

The ipod touch upgrade, and anything sold by the itunes shop is wrongly restricted to a short list of rich countries. Of course, It wont make a difference for the lucky people that was born in those countries, just bear in mind that there are millions living abroad. Perhaps Apple shops should restrict their product sales to holiday makers form developing countries, that find themselves -in a few days- abandoned with a brick without upgrades.

A Davila, Leon, Mexico

The Air is a very nice piece of kit, and the masses will benefit as competing manufacturers rush out thinner and lighter models than their current crops to compete. I do hope people are aware though that the "new" iPhone functionality has been present in Google Maps and especially Symbian powered smartphones for some time, especially adding icons and knowing your location on a map (with or without GPS).

Alex Kerr, London, UK

Style over substance, and at a premium price - Apple through and through so no real surprise surely?

Ian W, Fleet, Hants, UK

Though the new MacBook Air may be touch sensitive and the slimmest computer ever, it does have some downfalls. These are major failures which are not to be overlooked. The new MacBook contains no CD Drive as the creators of this laptop believe CD’s are out dated and a thing of the past. This will mean all your DVD’s have gone to waste, and you will be forced to spend hours downloading movies instead of simply buying a DVD. Moreover the new MacBook Air also doesn’t allow you to change the battery as most laptops do. This means that MacBook air users cant change the battery on long flights as they could with the older versions of Mac’s, limiting there usage time to a mere 5 hours. At a starting price of $1800 it is very expensive laptop considering its hideous flaws.

Mohamed Effat, Cairo, Egypt

I'm an avid apple fan - but why the expensive new gimic? An updated iphone (available for all networks) with a bigger hard drive and better camera would have been a much better idea! I think that Jobs is losing his direction this time!

Billy Bop, London, UK

Apple is a computer company that come out with the latest and best computer. They do not need to come out with computer that for averagely-incomed people, becasue that is not their market. If they do come out with computer like Josh said then is like BMW and Audi come out with a car in the same market with Hyundai. Why would anyone do that? I say Apple should keep doing what they doing and that's the only reason their name is different from Dell and others.

Roy, Norwalk, USA

£300/$600 more in the UK than the States the usual profiteering at the expense of the UK customer.

Paul Lavin, York, uk

Apple's computer offerings are important only for the influence they exert on the computers most of us use from 9 to 5. What a shame Apple doesn't have the will or the wherewithal to make computers for the averagely-incomed.

Having recently switched from an ageing Mac Mini to a Vista-based system, I shake my head at the majority's computing experience: files that fall into black holes, unintuituve dialogue bioxes, conflicting and overlapping media tools and a congenital inability to graso the KISS principle (Keep it Simple, Stupid)...

I want Apple to spin off a subsiduary that would make business machines and affordable home computers. I'm dreaming, I know, but wouldn't it be nice if the Everyman's computing experience were a little more intuitive, a little sensible, and a little more human.

Josh, Altrincham, Cheshire