I don't recall anybody saying the first macbook air was the "Best product Apple has ever built" - it was _clearly_ a concept piece that i wasn't even tempted to purchased. Too Expensive. Too Slow. Too little storage. No Optical Drive. - it missed the mark on _everything_ except for being small and light. It took a few years before the price came (way) down, it got faster, storage started to recover (a bit) and the lack of optical drive became as irrelevant as not having a floppy.
On the flipside - I'm tempted top purchase the 15" MBPro - and, where it not for the still-to-expensive storage and overall too great price, as well as having a display that's probably two years ahead of content/applications capability of supporting it - it would be a great device.
Also - nobody got that excited about the MacPro update - it was widely lambasted as too little, too late.
You're missing the 'x' that the gp implied. Every MacBook is the "Best MacBook Apple has ever built", every Air is the "Best Air Apple has ever built." In that line, the gp's comments make more sense.
Nobody has suggested that the latest MacPro is the best anything. It was a huge disappointment and Apple fell behind the curve with their release of it. Nobody is that excited about the new MacBook Airs - they are reasonable updates, but the big jump came in 2010, with some dandy performance improvements in 2011. This year was just an evolutionary move - fine for 2010 users, but very few people with a 2011 MBAir are that excited about upgrading. Likewise, the upgrade from the 4 to the 4S wasn't a must upgrade - most pundits indeed, even suggested you could take a pass if you were an iPhone 4 users.
The rMBPro, on the other hand, moved the needle.
I would reserve the "Best X Apple has ever made" for the 2010 MBAir, iPhone 4, iPad 3 - though, you are right, obviously any product that is better than a previous "best", should, in theory, inherit the next best label. Maybe "Best" has to be judged based on what you expect at any given time to be deserving of that trophy?
I haven't played with the rMBPro - so not sure about that yet. I was never that pleased with any of the 3 MBPROs I owned from 2003-2009. They were well built, solid laptops (with the exception of having one battery go all bulgey on me) - but They didn't excite me the way recent products from Apple have.
Who knows - I may still be "meh" on the MBPro - it's still pretty heavy. Expensive. Low Storage. And if you use it, sounds like 3.5-5 hours battery is all you can expect. Not to mention that there aren't that many apps or content that can support that crazy display.
On the flipside - I'm tempted top purchase the 15" MBPro - and, where it not for the still-to-expensive storage and overall too great price, as well as having a display that's probably two years ahead of content/applications capability of supporting it - it would be a great device.
Also - nobody got that excited about the MacPro update - it was widely lambasted as too little, too late.