Apple itself is a gigantic technology manufacturing company. Which means they're killing the planet! Computers, computer chips, computer batteries, cell phones—all are made of poison. And all end up in landfills. Apple will recycle your old computer, btw, if you promise to buy a new one, from them. (Our boss doesn't care for this line of criticism against the technology industry, pointing out that they've reduced paper usage, but paper is made from wood pulp, not mercury.) But Al Gore's on the board! And they had some sort of corporate initiative with the word "green" in its name. Just like G.E.!

(Not to mention the DRM-laden iTunes store, the company's habit of suing bloggers to reveal their sources, and all the other Boing Boing-bait shit they engage in.)

Apple products have always been "hip" in the bourgiest sense of that word, but now they're simply straight-up lifestyle accessories —you paid an extra two grand for a laptop without a DVD drive because it said Apple on it. Your mouse has one button, because Apple thinks its users are morons who will become confused by a second mouse button. You're paying extra for the brand, and nothing more. While that's always been true of certain varieties of 'hipness', sometimes there's a corresponding raise in quality. (The $200 Levi's jeans are sturdier and better constructed than the $60 equivalents. We're told!) With Apple products, that extra money goes into making your USB port-less laptop look like a clean bathroom tile.

Look, we'll be fair: the primary benefit of most Apple software, the Mac OS especially, is a pleasant intuitiveness and out-of-the-box usability. They look pretty and usually they work. This is why Apple products are perfect for your grandmother! She'll have a much easier time figuring out a Mac than trying to install Firefox on XP. This is also why old white dudes like Karl Rove or Rush Limbaugh or Charlie Rose enjoy their fine Apple computers. Not that you'd know this from Apple marketing, which plays exclusively to the cosmopolitan grup demographic. Designers! People who like the indie rock! Kids who wear sneakers! These products were designed for you, because Apple thinks you're imbeciles!

No, they clearly, seriously do. The damn "I'm a Mac" ads have been proving that for two years now. You're a Mac! You're an unpleasant and unlikable little pseudo-hipster creep! The PC is a lovable wit and a fantastic writer! But he wears a tie, you see, so he's a nerd. And they've been insulting your intelligence since day one! The 1984 Super Bowl ad? How childish do you have to be to think that buying one overpriced personal computer over a competing one is in any way a blow against any sort of authority?

At least they finally dropped "Think Different." Because that slogan made us want to find a way to somehow pry the entire West Coast off the continent and send it to drift into the ocean.

We don't hate Macs, we think iPhones are probably a better trend for assholes than BlackBerrys, we own an iPod, and we'll freely admit that buying a computer pre-loaded with Vista was one of the stupidest things we've ever done. (Works fine after the downgrade to XP tho!) Ok? We're just sick of people thinking that because some marketing firm lackey introduced his boss to Feist, or because Apple hired a designer who's heard of Bauhaus, that that makes them a more creative, liberal, or hip company than, say, Dell. At least Dell doesn't condescend to us.

On Sundays in my apartment, the coffee table where the Air sat becomes the final resting place for the bulky New York Times. It is not unusual for other magazines, and newspapers from previous days, to accumulate there as well.

My wife, whose clutter tolerance is well below my own, sometimes will swoop in and hastily gather the pulp in a huge stack, going directly to the trash-compactor room just down the hall from our apartment, dumping the pile into a plastic recycling bin. Sometimes the whole mess gets so nasty that I even perform this task myself. Could it be that somewhere in the stack was a Macintosh computer so thin that its manufacturer brags it could fit inside an envelope? I believe so. (For the record, my wife does not subscribe to this theory.)

As humiliating as it sounds, let me repeat: the MacBook Air is so thin that it got tossed out with the newspapers.

Unlikely. Fox is also partnering with Apple to feature Idol downloads on iTunes. The two companies, which also collaborate on movie downloads, could well have bartered promotions. An unfair advantage over the likes of HP and Dell? Of course. Steve Jobs's Hollywood ties are paying off on the bottom line.

Apple has enough MacBook Airs to give away to celebrities, but not enough to put one in each Apple Store — or even the flagships, like the big store at One Stockton Street? Such is the confidence Jobs has in the Apple brand: Would-be purchasers had to buy this mystical laptop sight unseen.

Yes, it was One Laptop Per Child's XO. The owner, who was being interviewed by some Web publication, told us that he "really liked" the OLPC and thought it had "great potential" to change the lives of children in the developing world. Then he went on a tangent about how the MacBook Air was too expensive and all we really needed was the OLPC because we could all load free software on it and then the world would be a better place. Then he started talking about how great socialism is. Welcome to San Francisco, but really, isn't he at the wrong conference?

Some more pics from the blogger lounge:

Rubinstein left Apple in the spring of 2006, before the Air began serious development. But he'd presumably have sufficient contacts within Apple to get such a warning. It would explain a long-standing mystery: Why Palm killed the Foleo later, rather than sooner. Better to take the financial hit in September — Palm wrote off $10 million in Foleo R&D — than to face the inevitable comparisons to a far superior machine in January.

Way back when, DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) unveiled a really thin laptop (was it one of the Hinote machines?). Anyway, they had a TV ad that went something like this:

- man puts briefcase on a table
- opens the briefcase
- starts taking stuff out: papers, folders, etc.
- finally the briefcase is empty
- he reaches into the little pocket on the inside cover of the briefcase
- takes out a manila envelope (10x13 mailer)
- rips open the envelope
- takes out the DEC laptop and puts it on the table