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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.
When I say *laptop* I use it for email, presentations, business operations and demonstrations. I don't use it for software development or any kind of network or processor intensive tasks.
It's thin, light, rugged with a good screen. Works well with projectors with 6+ hours of battery life (after four years). Microsoft Office's operation is fair (but I think that's more of Microsoft's issue than Apple's OS X).
I'm not an Apple guy (although I am a vehement Win 10 hater), just that this laptop has done what I've needed of it for years for my business, in a variety of different locations (and countries) without a glitch or problem of any kind.
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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.
I use a mid-2011 Air for almost everything that doesn't require a huge amount of power to run. Battery could use replacing as it's tough to go 4-5 hours, but it's by far the best laptop I've ever owned.
VNC, SSH w/X, or RDP to connect to beefier desktop or workstation machines completes it.
Trolling is a art,
I remember all the stupid jokes from my fellow nerd buddies. They didn't get it.
The MB Air was the first full powered portable work PC that you could carry around without breaking your back. 1.5 kg, 6 hours of battery time, sometimes more if you dimed the backlight and turned off wifi. I still have mine and it still is usable and useful. Although it does boot rather sluggish with macOS Sierra.
I hope they continue the line and make cheaper mac laptops again. 1500 Euros for a regular MB pro is just too much,
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
My laptop has Ethernet, HDMI, Thunderbolt, USB2, USB3, SD slot, head phones and microphone jacks.
The only thing ever really plugged in to it is a USB wireless mouse transceiver. I used to use a bluetooth mouse, but the dodgy Intel bluetooth kept randomly dropping out.
Sometimes I plug an SD card in to it, but that's via a micro to standard SD adapter.
Lots of people don't ever plug anything but the power cord in to their laptop.
I write for a living, so I "open" "save" and sometimes even "Print". The most video I'll ever use is Thunderbolt to a 1080 monitor. I bought an 11 inch Air, and pounded on it every day for five years. When it died (J and K didn't work any more, and the screen joint was loose), I tossed it and bought a 13 inch...the 11 being out of production. I was disappointed to see I was buying basically the same machine with a bigger screen and a touch more memory......but it was a bit cheaper, and for open-save-print, still great. The alternative in Windows is half the price, but the time spent keeping Windows 10 running, removing malware, etc pays back quickly. I didn't consider the new Pro, only because the USB was missing. There was room for a USB port, guys....
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.
Trolling is a art,
I bought the refreshed version with the original curvy form factor (and the port access flap). It was the first laptop I ever had with a solid-state drive... and taught me never to buy a laptop without one, ever again.
But much as I loved that one, I prefer this 2015 13" MacBook Pro - it's probably the best laptop Apple's ever made (and, unfortunately, will ever make). It's only 1/2 pound heavier than my Air was, and it's got lots of ports, a better screen, and a much better processor.
#DeleteChrome
I work as an IT integrator and am constantly visiting customer sites. Last time work refreshed my laptop (~3 years ago) I requested and received a Mac Air. There's been one refresh since, but the Air is still working fine and I kept it, the ultrabooks everyone else got have been swapped out.
The only thing I usually need to carry is a USB to serial cable just in case I need to work on a router. I have a thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor, but don't use it that often - amongst other things, I'm the guy who usually specs and supervises wireless rollouts, so most of the people I visit either have wireless or have it by the time I need to access their stuff. I do carry an charger, but I can't remember the last time I had to use it during a work day. Easily 8-10 hours to a charge.
If I had a normal HP laptop for work, I'd still need to carry a USB to serial adaptor, probably would need a USB-C to Ethernet adaptor (just in case) and I would grumble as much as everyone else about scrounging spare chargers.
The entire smart watch market is a flop.
If I as kid #4, I'd sell the Macbook Air and get a AMD Ryzen based gaming PC with the proceeds. You can build a gaming PC with a pretty kick ass video card in it for around $1,000.
Hell, he'd probably have enough left over for a cheap Dell or HP Windows 10 laptop along with some cash for games.
Apple Watch has the highest sales of any smart watch or luxury watch. I see them everywhere.
Seven million units according to Forbes.
Trolling is a art,
They really don't give a damn about anything that runs OS X these days and it's a shame.
What makes you say that? They've redone the MacBook Pro line with USB-C, the Touch Bar, super fast SSD storage, and still continue with excellent displays. On the desktop they just released the iMac Pro which is really powerful and actually has a decent cooling design, and we know they are working on an totally revised Mac Pro desktop.
You may not like some of the changes they made, but I don't see where anyone could reasonably say Apple does not "give a damn" about OSX hardware.
The only thing that really languishes is the Mac mini - and to some extent the Air (although what they have now is decent).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Glued in batteries, soldered down RAM and flash storage are all complicit in the prime example of planned obsolescence.
Or a recognition that the need to constantly upgrade CPU/RAM/storage has slowed to the point where a decently specced laptop can remain useful for years without needing anything upgraded.
Most people do not open their laptops to upgrade anything. Of those that do, most will only do so to add RAM and even then will not do it themselves. Those who want or need a machine that they can maintain themselves are a small niche that's growing smaller, even if we've been around longer than what is now the majority - people who want a laptop as an appliance.
The Air is not aimed at you. Or me. Or a bunch of folk on this site. But there's a large chunk of people for whom it's ideal and very well designed for _their_ needs. Serviceability is not a priority to that market segment and that has nothing to do with planned obsolescence.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I had many notebooks and always preferred portability over horsepower. I mostly ran Linux on them - IBM, Asus, HP, Dell - and it took me a bit to move to MacOS. The under-the-hood BSD was good enough to ease my apprehension leaving Linux to make the change, but the hardware was the closer. Now I still prefer Linux (my desktop is Fedora, don't judge) but you'd only pry my Air out of my hands with a newer, better Air. Give me 16G RAM and a better screen resolution and I am never leaving.
I've never seen one, ever. A co-worker's FitBit is about it. The market for smart watches and luxury watches is tiny. Who wears watches anymore? Not many people that I encounter.
Says who? Apple won't release their sales numbers for the watch, they don't break out that product category. The valuation is high because of phones, not watches.
Ahh. Let's say you owned the Apple Watch business - would you shut it down to stop the losses? Or be happy that you had one of the most profitable companies in the world? Don't compare it to the iPhone, compare it to everything else.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
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.
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