Apple just launched the MacBook Air, the world’s thinnest notebook. I was watching the launching of this notebook at MacWorld 2008 (you can see it here, part 1 and 2) and I got tired of hearing the words “smallest”, “thinnest”, “bigger”, “better” and any of these words.

But if you think about it, these are the things that make things remarkable. The biggest SUV, the smallest phone, the largest TV, the longest limo… These are the things that people talk about, these are the things that they are attracted to. It’s always the extremes that matter and it’s always the extremes that are mentioned everywhere.

Of course Apple gave up on many things when they built the MacBook Air. No CD-ROM drive, one USB plug, small screen and so on. But they know that people will buy it. People will buy it because they want to have the world’s thinnest notebook. It is not the smallest, there are other smaller, but it is the thinnest.

So people will go over these limitations and will give up on a thicker laptop without any of these limitations and will buy the new notebook from Apple. Good luck to them.

I just had a shower. Nothing special about that, but looking at my shampoo I noticed that it contains Herbal. The shower gel also. I brush my teeth with Herbal toothpaste. Lately Herbal is everywhere. Answers.com defines herbal as “relating to, or containing herbs“.

My toothpaste contains 5 herbal ingredients. The producer gives me the names of these herbs in Latin. What he doesn’t know is that I don’t speak Latin, nor other 99,9% of his consumers. Does he care about this? No. Because he chosen not to give us the basic information that we would need, but to create the image of a product similar to the ancient magic potions prepared by the witchdoctor. This is why my toothpaste contains “Chamaemelum nobile” and not “Chamomile”.

In the last few years Herbal became a fashion. You can see it in many products. It gives us the impression of natural and healthy products. But is it the truth or just another invention? All I know is that herbs are green, but my shampoo is blue, my shower gel is white, the toothpaste has 3 colors and I can not see the smallest organic particle in any of them.