Between an unevenly lit screen and unusable trackpad, no magsafe connector and sharp case edges, it doesn't matter what hardware specs are being offered at any price, Asus missed the mark on 2 of the 3 primary means of interacting with the computer. I wouldn't want that computer if it were free.
On the level of a $1000-$2000 purchase, details matter and the Asus Zenbook just fails here. It doesn't matter that it has twice as much SSD space and RAM as the MBA because, I don't want to use a device that has a bad screen and bad trackpad.
I don't understand why no PC manufacturer has done something different like a very gentle ratchet or mild Vel-cro to get YankSafe functionality. Or even just slightly differently laid out magnets.
Velcro would be decidedly cheap and tacky. It would also not be very durable. As for a ratchet, I'm not entirely sure what this would look like, but it might be doable. It wouldn't have the nice feel of MagSafe regardless, though.
As for differently laid-out magnets, I believe Apple's patent is pretty broad, and basically covers any magnetic attachment of a power supply to an electronic device. Supposedly (according to Wikipedia) some Japanese appliances have magnetic connectors, so it's questionable how valid Apple's claim is. I guess the real issue is whether anyone wants to fight Apple over this. And to be fair, Apple clearly put out a genuine innovation here.
Inductive chargers then? Surely the current crop of barrel jacks can be improved upon in some way without violating a patent. Barrel jack plugs just suck.
Inductive chargers would be awesome for docks, but don't seem very useful for mobile use. Setting an inductive charger down and then placing a laptop on it means that a pulled cord still drags the laptop with it. Unless inductive chargers have gotten a lot better, they need to basically be in contact with the laptop, so having a separate device just sitting near the laptop would be inefficient (unless I'm wrong about this, in which case an inductive charging cube would be awesome).
I agree that it seems PC laptops should have some way of improving the power connection. The status quo is crappy.
They did say that it's cheaper, no. That can be a form of better.