Who actually wants a thinner iPhone?

THERE WAS A time when thickness and weight were two main questions when buying new technology, maybe even the most important.

- DAVE LEE Bloomberg

That's why, when Steve Jobs slipped a MacBook Air out of an envelope in 2008, we all oohed. It was a new dawn for laptops: finally some mercy for the world's shoulders.

There were some performance trade-offs, but they were seen as worth it. The MacBook Air redefined expectations of how a laptop could look and feel, and it only got better from there. As well as MacBook Air, by 2013 we had the iPad Air, too.

Continuing the trend on Tuesday, Apple Inc. introduced the 5.64 mm-thick iPhone Air to answer those critics who say that at 7.95 mm, the new iPhone 17 is too thick, a certified whopper. If you can locate any of those critics, please send them to me because I don't believe they exist. Nor do I believe many consumers will care about thickness when they learn the iPhone Air means sacrificing things they worry about more than any other factor: battery life and a more-capable camera.