Sultans of smug , Apple, have reduced the price of its top of the range MacBook Air by $500.

It is not because the outfit wants to encourage sales, or help its client base in the bottom line, it is because Intel has dropped the price of the 1.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the price of the 64-GB solid-state drive has plummeted by $400.

The deluxe model is now priced at $2,598. The price of the base model with a 1.6-GHz processor remains unchanged at $1,799. While computer makers often drop prices when component costs fall, they usually make a bit of a thing about it.

It is not clear why Apple decided to keep the price cut secret. Perhaps it fears that it will damage its reputation for being reassuringly expensive.