The thing is, however, that when you actually try them out, the MB air leaves a hugely better impression.

The MB air is light, sleek, elegant, it feels good in your hands, it makes you want to use it and carry it around—and that's despite it being a notebook, not a tablet.

The Surface Pro 1, however, is exactly the opposite: it's heavy, thick, uncomfortable to hold because of the weird sharp-edged shape, and insanely hot during operation. The Surface Pro is exactly what a tablet shouldn't be. I suppose MS has all but admitted that with their strong marketing emphasis on using it with a stand and a keyboard.

I certainly hope for MS's sake that the Surface Pro 2 is better, because the SP1 was a disaster...

I used Surface Pro for my graduate thesis extensively. It left a huge impression on me. Metro side apps were all fun for me, while a swipe to desktop meant all work business. Yeah 1 kg is not a big deal for me, i taught classes with it, took notes with it, ran IBM SPSS doing ANOVA, wrote papers in LATEX and did some SolidWorks, and heavy MATLAB work on it. It is hot, yes. But then, it remained in my lap for around 5% of the time.

I find your claims ("heavy, thick, uncomfortable to hold because of the weird sharp-edged shape") to be without merit, since I used it extensively for some major work. Going forward, Surface Pro is the future for me and my household.