I looked up wireless-N routers with USB, and couldn’t find one for much less than $200 (say, $180). Then add on a 1TB drive, another $300.. rapidly approaching $500 there. And you still have 2 boxes in your living room, and you’re relying on them functioning individually and together for your NAS to work. With TimeCapsule, you have one device that is your gigabit/802.11N base station, 1TB NAS, and USB print server. All wrapped into one device, with Apple’s logo on it. Not shabby IMO, I can see myself getting one.

The iTouch paid update is likely due to the same reason they charged for the 802.11N upgrade on their airport base stations, Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Movie rentals, I agree, the price is ok, for the convenience of not having to run to Blockbuster/etc. Personally, I’d stick with Netflix (I currently have Netflix *and* Blockbuster Online. For the price of renting 5 movies from Apple, I get about 12-20 from either of these services (depending on how diligent I am about my turnaround time).

For $1800, you can order an MBA on the internet! Heh, anyways, I feel this one is overpriced. It has less power, less storage, and less ports than the MacBook, and costs 50% more. Sure the small-ness is good, but for the price, I’d just assume go with the regular MacBook.