It was January 15, 2008 when Steve Jobs unveiled the world’s thinnest notebook.

Since the MacBook Air’s launch its been plagued with issues around heat, price and design.
Overpriced and underperforming

Overpriced and underperforming

Heat
When they first launched the MacBook Air users complained of lockups centered around heat produced when the machine was working near 100% capacity.  This has since been fixed.
Price
When launched the MacBook Air was $2499 to start! Since its launch two revisions have followed and both showed a dramatically reduced price. Currently today if you went to buy a MacBook Air they start at $1499.
Design
Often praised for its unbelievable craftsmanship the Macbook Air was plauged with issues around only having one USB Port, a really crappy graphics card and a very underpowered Intel CPU.  Future revisions have remedied the graphics card issue, but the one USB port and slow processor still remain.
It’s been over a year since the MacBook Air was updated. In computer time this is an eternity.  So whats going on?  My hunch is Apple used this product as an experiment a few things:
1. Better manufacturing process’ (the unibody enclosure) now used on all MacBook Pro products.
2.  A high margin product that had just enough sex appeal to sell well enough to keep the lights on but not warrant any heavy R&D investment
3.  Better market research on true mobile computing. The MacBook Air is thin and light but nowhere near the iPad which is slowly becoming a dominant force in ultra portable computing.
My Prediction
One more revision before the holiday season before the MacBook Air is retired.  You can pick up a MacBook for $999 today thats much faster, a tad heavier, but if you need lightweight computing hello iPad + a MacBook for the same price :)