Why Apple saddled the MacBook Air with "gimped" CPUs
 

Given that Apple really went all-out to upgrade the rest of the Air package, the choice of a geriatric CPU is a giant slap in the face to Intel's latest portable processor options. Apple looked at Arrandale, Intel's 32nm CPU with a northbridge/GPU combo integrated into the same package, and said, "No thanks, but do you have any more of the really old chips?"

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...campaig n=rss

thank god for this^, makes perfect sense, I'd rather have a Core 2 Duo system with a HD 6850, than a Core i7-980 system with HD 5770.