The Apple store was shut yesterday afternoon, always the prelude to some new announcement. I wanted to buy Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for our huge rack of XServes but paused when I was told it was £329. I wonder how much it costs in the States?

Anyway, the new announcement is the MacBook Air, the thinnest computer ever launched. As you would expect, it looks fabulous, a really desirable object. But is it a Must Have?

Not yet.The launch model has a 13″screen. My MacBook Pro has a 15.5″screen and I have to supplement it with the 23″Apple Cinema Display. So not enough screen real estate for me.

It has only one USB port, and a new type of DVI connector which means I’d have to buy more new cables and connectors. The door to my darkroom is draped — nay, festooned — with past cables and bygone connectors. One day there may be another use for them.

It doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive. How do you load programs? Simple, says Apple. You buy a PC, put your application disk in the PC, find the PC wirelessly (never quite as easy as Apple makes out), highlight the disc and upload it from there. Neat. But I haven’t got a PC. I suppose another Mac will work the same.

There was a hoo-ha when Apple first launched the iMac and it didn’t have a floppy disk drive. Now they’ve done the same for optical drives. Now instead of renting movies from LOVEFiLM, we can download them wirelessly from Apple’s own iTunes store. That’s kind of them.

The MacBook Air is lovely. I want one. But this time I can wait.

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