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.