10 Years of the MacBook Air (theverge.com)

Ten years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air. "Apple's Macworld 2008 was a special one, taking place just days after the annual Consumer Electronics Show had ended and Bill Gates bid farewell to Microsoft," The Verge recalls. "Jobs introduced the MacBook Air by removing it from a tiny paper office envelope, and the crowd was audibly shocked at just how small and thin it was..." From the report: At the time, rivals had thin and light laptops on the market, but they were all around an inch thick, weighed 3 pounds, and had 8- or 11-inch displays. Most didn't even have full-size keyboards, but Apple managed to create a MacBook Air with a wedge shape so that the thickest part was still thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony TZ Series -- one of the thinnest laptops back in 2008. It was a remarkable feat of engineering, and it signaled a new era for laptops. Apple ditched the CD drive and a range of ports on the thin MacBook Air, and the company introduced a multi-touch trackpad and SSD storage. There was a single USB 2.0 port, alongside a micro-DVI port and a headphone jack. It was minimal, but the price was not. Apple's base MacBook Air cost $1,799 at the time, an expensive laptop even by today's standards.

Comments

I wish they were still trying

[silverkniveshotmail.]

They really don't give a damn about anything that runs OS X these days and it's a shame. You'd think with all the money they have they'd be willing to take some risks and innovate.

Re: I wish they were still trying

[jellomizer]

Actually cutting costs is a game to prolong failure.
Gateway 2000 back in the early to mid 1990s were well known for its quality. Sure they cost a bit more but it was worth the extra price. Then they started to cust costs and make cheaper products which made people to hate the product.
Dell in the mid 1990s to mid 00. Play the same story.
Mid 00 - mid teens Apple has the spot.
Now the question what is the quality computer line up that is coming up next?
Lenovo the think pad line has consistently kept its quality. HP? Acer? Microsoft?

In general while the tech crowd is more or less happy with getting a lot of cheap hardware. Most consumers want a good piece of hardware even if it costs extra money and even if it has a higher total cost of ownership.
Because we can get a computer at half the cost and during its lifetime we just need to replace half of its components. We still save money. But that is for the people who likes to fix these things. For average person such issues stress them out and having to fix their box is scary and resent having bought the product in the first place.

Re:Released by Steve Jobs

[grub]

Apple Watch is a new one that is raking in cash. Updates on other devices have proven very successful. Their valuation is far higher than at any time Jobs was in charge.

Re:Released by Steve Jobs

[grub]

Apple Watch has the highest sales of any smart watch or luxury watch. I see them everywhere.
Seven million units according to Forbes.

Re:Ah yes, the beginning of the dongle era

[blindseer]

This "dongle madness" is spreading. I'm looking for a new laptop and it seems that most anything that's even close to the size of an Apple will have only USB-C, headphones, and a power port (if it doesn't use USB-C for power), and maybe a SD card slot.

I'm not complaining. I like it really. I don't have to look for the video port to plug in a monitor, the Ethernet port to connect to the network, the serial port to the router (or whatever I need to program at the time), and the mouse port for a mouse. It's just one port does it all and the adapter circuitry is so small it's part of the plug or cord. The MacBook Pro with it's two or four ports means I'm not likely to need a hub or dock in most cases. With just one port then I'll need a dongle of some sort but with the power bricks and adapters so much smaller now I'm still ahead on space in my bag. For most things I expect I'll need just a cheap USB 2.0 A to C adapter which can be had in three packs for $10 or so.

I've had people complain about not knowing what kind of port or cable to use since one USB-C port can be for power, video, Thunderbolt devices, and USB devices. After some research in this I see that the specifications require iconography on the cable end to indicate the capability of the cable. Sometimes the icon might be hard to read or otherwise a bit ambiguous but I'm not sure I still see a problem. Maybe I'll change my tune once I get my new computer.

Re:Released by Steve Jobs

[TheRaven64]

I've seen a few, though to be fair most of them were on Apple employees. The one use I've seen for them that I actually like is two-factor auth. I saw a colleague use this and it seems pretty convenient. The watch connects to the computer via Bluetooth and when you need to do 2FA the watch beeps and prompts for a fingerprint and then signs the request. It's more convenient than carrying a U2F token around with you, but not quite so convenient that I would actually want one.