macbooks might be a standard for web design/development, but its overkill for grandma down the street who still uses the AOL dialup.
for a niche profession, they can be considered bare minimum, but for population-at-large, they're pretty fancy.
bare minimum to have wireless-N networking? built-in bluetooth 2.0? scalable trackpad? I wouldn't call OSX 10.5 a bare minimum OS either, and the bundled apps Apple gives you when you buy a new machine rivals any PC laptop on the market hands down no discussion. Love my Macbook, I didn't buy it to be cool, I bought it because I'm a diehard Mac user and my old Powerbook G4 was getting long in the tooth. I didn't see a reason to spend $500 more for the Pro 15" monster either, but I did get the black Macbook because I wouldn't ever own a white laptop, I needed more hard drive space, and the faster chip was icing on the cake.
Disclaimer: I work on ThinkPads with Linux on them. They're more costly than MacBooks, this is why I recommend Macbooks: they're well-built, inexpensive, modern machines that will make you more productive.
Top of the line are MBPs and ThinkPads "P"-series, $1,700+.