MacBook Air Celebrates Tenth Anniversary
It’s been ten years since Apple announced its first MacBook Air on Monday. The design of the thin laptop inspired many other manufacturers and has not changed since the third generation of the Air from 2010.
On January 15, 2008, the late Steve Jobs announced the first MacBook Air by removing it from a paper shipping envelope. With this, Apple wanted to show how thin the laptop was: 1.93 cm at the thickest point. Apple managed to achieve that by omitting the optical drive and opting first for an Intel Core 2 Duo with a smaller package. In the first version, an SSD was not yet standard: there was a 1.8 “HDD of 80GB available. An SSD of 64GB was optional.
Apple did not follow the trend of making the entire laptop smaller, but mainly focused on making the model thinner in order to offer users a normal 13.3″ screen, full keyboard and large multi-gesture touchpad It wasn’t the first laptop that didn’t have an optical drive, and it was also missing from Sony’s equally thin Vaio X505 from 2004. It was a clear sign that the DVD drive was definitely on the decline.
The first MacBook Air received mixed reactions because of the steps back on many parts in exchange for the reduced thickness. The processor was slow, the battery time limited and the price high. Behind a cover were only a 3.5mm audio jack, USB 2.0 port and micro-DVI connection, with which Apple even omitted its own FireWire. Apple supplied adapters for VGA and DVI at the time.
In 2010, Apple modified the design and the laptop got its signature wedge shape. In addition, the resolution went up from 1280×800 pixels to 1440×900 pixels, a USB 2.0 port was added and the SSD became standard. The price also went down and there appeared to be room for an SD card slot, although some of the thickness was scraped off. In addition, an 11″ model was added. With the adjustments, Apple managed to make the MacBook Air a great success.
Apple still has the MacBook Air in its range, but the laptop is leading a bit of a languishing existence. Aside from better hardware, the laptop hasn’t had a significant update; for example, the screen still has a tn panel. The 12-inch MacBook has surpassed the Air in many ways, and on the other hand, the MacBook Pro has become a lot more portable and manageable, with more computing power.
In the wake of the MacBook Air, many other laptops appeared that were built on the same last. That was partly thanks to Intel, which unveiled its Ultrabook concept in 2011 to set certain standards for thin and light Windows laptops.