How the MacBook Air Changed Laptops Forever

When Apple launched the MacBook Air at the remnant of January 2008 , it was an overpriced marvel of design and tech . The laptop , a silver splinter of machine aluminium , was .76 in at its thick-skulled and count less than three pounds . In an impractical but effectiveon - stage demonstration , Steve Jobs bring out the the $ 1,800 computer by removing it from manila interoffice envelope to demonstrate just how lithe it really was . “ What is the MacBook Air ? ” he ask while pace the stage . “ In a prison term , it ’s the world ’s tenuous notebook computer . ”

Ten age later , the grocery store is flooded with slight laptop , and while Apple has kept the Air on shelves , it let its guts pine as it shifted focal point to other , more profitable product . In the tenner since the ship’s company first turn the Air , it ’s made a fistful of loyal , slender , and more herculean laptop computer . But despite all of this , none have changed the flight of mobile computing quite as much as the Air .

When Apple released the original MacBook Air , the reception was divided . Some thought it was a waste of money ; others believed it was a vision of the future tense . “ The Air showed the possible action of what computation could be , ” Francois Nguyen , creative director at the design consultancy Frog , tell Gizmodo . For industrial fashion designer like Nguyen , the MacBook Air signaled a important shift in how they did their job . It change they way they thought about manufacture ; it emboldened company to gift in good blueprint ; and in the outgrowth , it elevated what consumers postulate of a laptop .

Illustration: Sam Woolley/GMG

Illustration: Sam Woolley/GMG

Cheap netbooks like the Asus Eee personal computer 900 were what most people thought ultraportables would look like in 2008 . The MacBook Air was bear at an interesting time . In 2008 , mobile computing was stuck in two worlds : bulky , high - power workhorses like the Lenovo ThinkPad that were technically portable , but a pain to carry around , and chintzy , lightweight plastic netbooks like Asus ’s line ofEee microcomputer that could do little more than connect to the cyberspace and range simple software . The Air fall somewhere between the two . Apple work with Intel to miniaturise its Core 2 couple processor cow chip , the same CPU used in its more powerful MacBook and iMac , thin the size of it by 60 percentage . This smaller buffalo chip invention enabled the Air to shrink its logic board , making more room for batteries and reducing the size of the computing machine all in all .

Originally , Apple built the Air to vie with lightweight portable computers like Sony ’s TZ notebooks , which featured a like tapered design and 3 - pound system of weights . During his January 2008 presentation , Jobs pulled up a graphic comparing the TZ ’s heaviness to the Air ’s . “ The thickest part of the MacBook Air is still thin than the thinnest part of the TZ serial publication , ” he gloated . “ We ’re talking thinly here . ”

Indeed , the Air was a remarkable exploit of industrial design . “ You had these razor sharp edges , ” Nguyen says . “ It does n’t have any give to it ; it ’s just this beautiful , solid object . ” Apple ’s habit of caliber material gave the notebook computer a pleasurable heftiness . Its full - sized keyboard is , to this daytime , one of the best Apple has ever designed . The Air ’s var. was so iconic that in 2012 Apple wasawarded a patentto protect its hoagy silhouette from competitors who had begun to replicate it .

Steve Jobs reveals the Air to the world in January 2008. (Photo: Getty Images)

It was n’t a perfect computer , though . The original Air had limited storage and no internal ocular drive — the latter was more or less the equivalent of removing the headphone jack from an iPhone today . Its single USB port wine was a prescient glimpse of what was to come , but it was impractical and unheard of at the fourth dimension . Apple attempted to make up for those perceived shortcomings with its satiny unibody blueprint and multi - touch trackpad . Still for many people , the Air was merely a very pretty , very expensive netbook . “ By definition , the Air really was more or less a netbook , ” Nguyen says . “ But it was too all-fired beautiful to be lumped in with all these other broken - cost plastic offerings that were coming out . ”

It ’s true that Apple stripped the Air of certain technologies that consumers had grown used to , but for some , the Air ’s lack of features was a welfare . “ Apple took a stance on discipline and reductionism , ” tell Mladen Barbaric , who establish the industrial design studioInstrummentsas well the stigmatisation and mathematical product design firmPearl Studios . “ If you ’re pass to make the ultimate travel laptop , you ’re going to have to make some tradeoffs . ” In retrospect , those trade-off , however painful they were at the time , ushered in the untethered way of working that ’s so rough-cut today .

When the Air first launch , the cloud was still an imperfect and nebulous concept . I call back repeatedly deleting files from my laptop computer when its punishing drive inevitably reach capacity . But Apple took an early bet that enough people prized portability over magnate , and it eventually paid off . “ It forced me to overhaul my way of working , ” aver Barbaric . “ I still work this way today . ”

The cheap Asus Eee PC 900 was a typical netbook at the time.

The short - terminus head ache that the Air induced were worth it for early adopters like Nguyen , who think the Air turned work out into a luxury activeness . Nguyen withdraw possess the Air as the ultimate workplace condition symbolisation . It was a way to distinguish between the doer bee , who postulate big - duty computers to do the genuine mill of designing , and the foreman , who could slip the Air out of their traveling bag and shoot off a few emails . “ My goal is to get to the point where I have to impart nothing , ” he say .

By 2011 Apple had introduced a smaller 11 - column inch Air that started at $ 999 , and reduced the price of the basal 13 - inch model to a much more sane $ 1,299 to compete with companies like Acer , Asus , and Lenovo who with the assistant of Intel ’s miraculously flinch guts , were fix ready to bring forth skinny , powerful machines of their own . These PC “ ultrabooks , ” which after trickling out at the end of 2011 and had their bighearted coming out company at CES in 2012 , were positioned as a less - expensive Windows - based option to the Air .

Today , subject , lightweight notebooks are the norm , and it ’s not a stretch to thank Apple for that . “ They create a new food market around what ’s consider an ultra - portable laptop computer , ” says Barbaric .

The Sony Vaio TZ was Apple’s laptop to beat in 2008.

Apple was able to do that by prove new manufacturing mental process that helped streamline the yield of its clean - lined metal gadgets . In 2008 , CNC milling , the process by which the Air is made , was primary used for making prototypes and low intensity product . Milling was expensive ; it required especial tooling that could precisely pare a block of aluminum down to the A-one - sharp edges found on the Air . Over the course of year , Apple invested in the process and scaled it up with the intent to comprise unibody aluminum blueprint in more products than just the Air . Other consumer electronics companies take aim observance and starting cerebrate about how they could do the same . “ I can separate you that the interest in super - sparse laptops lace immediately after the launching of the MacBook Air , ” Barbaric tell . “ It impacted people right away , but because developing takes a while , you did n’t see that right away on the grocery store . You saw the ripple effect over metre as masses bring through this behind closed doors . ”

To this day , Apple still uses the processes it put in place for the MacBook Air to fabricate MacBooks and MacBook Pros . The frame are different , but the DNA is the same . Apple figured out how to shove miniaturized components into an ever - shrinking metal body without relying on the the Air ’s tapered visual core , which gives the new MacBook a different silhouette . The elementary virtues of the raw MacBook — its thinness and lightsomeness — are evolutionary trait inherit from the very first Air . “ They could ’ve named the new MacBook ‘ MacBook Air and you in all probability would n’t have nictate , ” Barbaric says .

Instead , Apple decided to permit the airwave stand alone and die a slow , toilsome decease . Just lastweek , the society dropped a hint that it might lastly kill the Air after years of lease it imprison . It ’s grueling to deny that the time has come for the Air , at least in its current variant , to cede its place as Apple ’s entranceway - floor notebook . But it ’s just as of import to retrieve its legacy as the religious predecessor to the laptops we screw and love today .