Dear god why? I am actually quite unimpressed by the entire WWDC lineup, but they made so many stupid mistakes like this. There is almost no advantage to using a slightly slimmer MagSafe, and moderate cost; there would be greater advantage to a smaller iPod Dock connector, but much higher cost, so I guess they'll do that too.

That was exactly my response, as well, as I have something like 7 85W magsafe adapters scattered throughout my house and bags.

Then I saw the backward-compatibility adapter[1]. It's not so bad. You can probably just leave it on the computer (or cable) 24/7 and never notice it. It's _tiny_, and only $10. Whenever I end up with a device that uses it, I will probably just buy 10 of them and leave 2 or 3 in every bag I own.

Still debating if I want to drop $4k just for retina, as my current machine is the quad-3.4 iMac with 32GB. I will probably wait for a retina Air or retina TB Display.

Now, if they'd made it a clunky dongle, or charged more than $15, I would be sharpening my pitchfork. Connector conspiracy or no, I get the impression that this was a situation where this was the only possible way to get the new case just right.

It's not like they'd do this just to fuck with us - the thing has asymmetric _fan blades_, for fuck's sake.

[1] http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD504

"Almost no advantage" = thinner laptops. Apple will go for thinner every time (see ethernet for an example).

It's not thinner than the MBA 2011. The MBA 2011 has regular MagSafe. Maybe they needed to go thinner for engineering reasons to put other stuff inside, but that seems lame.

With the MBA 2011 the connector sits very low such that simply putting the laptop down on a couch will disconnect the connector in my experience. It's the #1 issue I've had while trying to use an MBA.

If using a thinner connector let Apple fix that problem, that would be quite nice. Of course it's possible that it didn't. I haven't had a chance to try the new thing.

I noticed that, too -- adding a snap-on case to the Air solves that, at the expense of making it slightly thicker. However, I strongly prefer the texture/grippiness of the case, and it protects the laptop from a lot of damage (I still use a sleevecase, but I've had the laptop fall ~3m, cracking the plastic case, and otherwise fine). The cases have little feet on them, too, which raises it up to protect the connectors.

(http://www.speckproducts.com/satin-macbook-air-case-13-black...)