To each their own, but personally I reacted positively to that sentence and immediately knew I want to read the whole article - because I knew the author feels the same way as I do: that computers are increasingly built for casual consumption, and are optimized to be toys, not tools.
I've used a 2012 MacBook Air 11,6" till 2018 for 3D development among other tasks. It's not a toy only usable for consumption. It's simply a good compromise when you care about mobility.
The author is probably working quite a bit in cramped network closets with unmanaged, or only partially managed networking gear. While these environments might be becoming less common, they will still exist for many years to come.
To work in these environments efficiently, an air is far from ideal. It's a good machine, but the amount of dongles you'd need to carry on a typical day would be rather intimidating, hooking it up and managing the rats nest of adapter cables would be tedious.
From this perspective, it's not unreasonable to call them toys. Simple things like having prominent rubber feet helps a lot with not having to worry the machine will slip and fall if the surface isn't perfectly flat and level.
With that said, I believe introducing an idea through calling other things toys without explaining why they are akin to toys in your line of work, is absolutely not the best way to present an idea.
Anyway, some features, like having the laptop be able to work as screen and keyboard for a headless machine would really be amazing in this line of work!
