Nope, it was launched in both black and purple. I got my black one at midnight on launch day, heh.
And I actually watched the special MTV had on the XBox 360. While overall it was incredibly lame, as one would expect a video game special made by MTV to be, it had a few good tidbits of info.
It has a detachable faceplate, and apparently different faceplates will be sold. So if you were incredibly upset about the white, I'm sure you could get a black faceplate and situate it in some way where you couldn't see the sides, heh.
It also did look considerably smaller than the XBox on TV.
That said, the graphics of the game previews they showed weren't anything too impressive I'd say. They really didn't look any better than Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory looks on the Xbox to me. Obviously later titles will look better, but this system (like every other one before it) doesn't look like it will be able to rival any PC games graphics-wise.
Now if they designed the wireless controllers a with lithium-ion battery and some charging system, that would really impress me, but it doesn't look like they did.