Modifications

Well, I'm sure all the Apple fanboys were just moist with anticipation about today's new MacBooks. There was rumoured to be a sub-$800 laptop from the company, which turned out to be false: the lowest-priced model now in the line is $999 US, $1149 Cdn, which is still pretty good, though I won't be buying one.

Here's a clipping from the front page of Apple's website today

and the thing I want to know is, "State-of-the-art what?"

When "state of the art" is a noun phrase, which is clearly is in "The new state of the art", there are no hyphens. When it's hyphenated into a single unit, it magically becomes an adjective, as in "a state-of-the-art computer", and like most adjectives in English is therefore followed by the noun it modifies.

Hear that, Apple? It needs a noun after it. Either supply one, or get rid of those hyphens.