The weaponized aerosol RDF particles were in the air. Steve Jobs delivered his Keynote-enabled thunder at Moscone in San Francisco, doling out, by his count, four -- count 'em, four -- new "big things" from Apple.

At this point I'm going to have to consult my notes, because the ontological distinctions are a bit jumbled in my head a few hours later.

Okay, one was the MacBook Air. Apple's ad uses the word "Thinnovation" -- better or worse than "Fahrvergnugen"? Only time will tell.

It is a sexy beast, if you're into the iPhone look and feel. The dark keyboard and aluminum casing show the design debt and it is almost unbelievably trim from certain angles. Apple's booth has ample comparisons, even mobiles, to show how really different the MBA's proportions are from those of other Apple laptops.

It should provide decent performance, at least on par with a MacBook -- similar clock and bus speeds, similar GPU. Not as fast as a MacBook Pro, but cheaper. As you'd expect for its positioning and price.

It'll sell. Better than other style-first designs -- helloooo, Cube -- but there are some gaps that could kill it as an option for some people.

For example, there's no Ethernet. For a lot of corporate types, where wireless networks are a no-no even for staff members from other offices (ahem, Ziff Davis), in order to get online you need a wired connection.

Some people have already complained about the inability to swap out the battery for, say, a long plane flight. There are adapters for powering laptops on planes, but those of us in steerage (sorry, coach) don't always get that option.

And this is certainly not the Mac to get if you are only going to have one computer. Jobs made the case for wireless as a go-to replacement (use Time Capsule for backup -- without burning a few files to sneakernet; use Apple's new rentals to watch movies -- though not the ones you already own; use Remote Disc for software installation from a Mac or PC -- pretty interesting). But you absolutely must have another computer at some point.

Last thought: Wonder how long it'll take for the iMac Air to show up? After all, the iMacs share an awful lot of architecture with Apple's laptops.

Second thing: movie rentals. Jobs admitted that the original idea of the Apple TV had been "iTunes for your TV," which confused me for a long time. I've been to two houses where they had a cable music channel playing with the TV on, but you certainly don't need another $300 appliance for that. Now, with "Apple TV Take Two," the same hardware, through a free software update, gets access to a huge back end and infrastructure that people might actually want.

What's amazing is that it seems Apple's foreseeing enough revenue to cover the hardware and software R&D and support, as well as the bandwidth and servers required to shove all those terabytes of data over the intertubes. What's even more amazing is that Jobs managed to talk most major studios (the Weinsteins weren't mentioned), including Sony, into getting on board. What this could mean for the DRM-free defection of some associated record labels to Amazon's music store... who knows.

But a lot is going to depend on something out of Apple's control. I'm not sure my creaky connection at home could support a decent viewing experience, and I know I'm not alone in that. What about dropped connections? How many unintended pauses will consumers have to face? Even though the HD content is 720p and not 1080p, file sizes are going to be awful large.

Still, Apple's already proven it can sell similar, and lower-quality, content through the iTunes Store. So this'll be a nice revenue stream for a while.

(Haven't found out details yet on how the DRM works; expect frothing reactions from the "information -- and movies -- wants to be free" crowd.)

The third thing is something really enticing for me. Time Capsule promises to wrap up wireless disk sharing and wireless backups in an idiot-proof package, which is about my speed for networking. Jobs made a great point that people with laptops aren't as likely to connect and disconnect external hard drives each time they move (and remember, if you don't unmount the drives before disconnecting, bad things can happen, like kittens going homeless).

Though, of course, this is what the Leopard and AirPort Extreme combo promised to do. I (and others) bought new external drives because even through beta builds, Time Machine worked with a drive plugged into one of the AirPort Extreme's ports. Then, nada. Funny how that works.

You can get the full functionality through, say, SuperDuper and some creative configuring. But Time Capsule, if it works as advertised, would be great for people like my parents, who aren't sure how a mouse works. I know I'd hit it.

The fourth thing ... fourth thing. There it is: updates to the iPhone and iPod Touch ($20 for the latter?) They're interesting enough -- the locating feature new to Google Maps could help me a lot -- but the big slam is going to be when the SDK is released in February and real third-party apps start showing up.

Though adding Mail and Maps to the iPod Touch edges it closer to being a casual laptop replacement.

Overall? Not as instantly game-changing as last year's introduction of the iPhone -- Apple's not really into any new markets just yet this year -- but it's nice to see the company is still making computers, even as it moves into more appliances (iPhone, Apple TV with movie rentals) that don't require a Mac.