HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Retro and sentimentality are always “in” for some. See classic cars for just one of many examples. My favorite games to play on 2025 tech capable of so much more are 8-bit classics coded 20-40 years ago.
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The MacBook Air Turns 17 Today
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Retro and sentimentality are always “in” for some. See classic cars for just one of many examples. My favorite games to play on 2025 tech capable of so much more are 8-bit classics coded 20-40 years ago.
Luckily my M1 Air is still going strong 💪
I owned the first gen 11” back in 2010. I really loved that size. But looking at the numbers my current machine isn’t really that much bigger. That was great evolution.
It was really innovative for its time, despite its shortcoming & price… I wanted one for years, and ended up getting the 2013 11-inch model… One of my favorite laptops ever.
Crash Bandicoot III really looks good (pixellated AF) on a M4 MBP
and so does Chuckie Egg!I remember seeing that presentation and looking at my plastic white Macbook (Pro? the one with removable battery and without AirPort included) and just being like… oh well, it’s not like I’m ever going to be able to afford this envelope laptop, and it must be awful. Then our CCO bought himself one, brought it to the office, and I had to force my mouth shut to stop salivating. And that was the ridiculous first model with one port under a ‘foldable door’ but it *was* the sexiest computer I’ve ever seen until the retina Macbook. (I said ‘seen’, not ‘used’, re: rMB.)
Folks forget! Plus it was also horribly slow from the 5400 rpm hdd. When sdd became available at reasonable cost it was a game changer.
Edit — it was 4200 rpm! Even worse than I remembered!
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4200 RPM HDD. Same as an iPod. I got lucky and avoided the pain... my grandma bought me one with the SSD BTO.
My first ever Mac... I haven't been back.
I still remember when it came out. It was so exciting.
Despite the huge bezels that OG design still holds up quite well. People give Apple **** for their obsession with thinness and removing ports but I think it really worked for the Air. Pushed people away from discs and helped set the path for a single port design that combined multiple uses (USB C).
If Apple did an "Air Classic" design but with some modern refinements then I'd buy one. 13" + 15" screen option, 2-3 USB C ports in the little hatch, a "body notch" for magsafe, smaller bezels but still aluminium and matching the rest of the body colour, full trackpad with no left/right buttons.
Basically todays MacBook Air with a tapered/slightly rounded design and no glass bezel/notch.
Despite the huge bezels that OG design still holds up quite well. People give Apple **** for their obsession with thinness and removing ports but I think it really worked for the Air. Pushed people away from discs and helped set the path for a single port design that combined multiple uses (USB C).
If Apple did an "Air Classic" design but with some modern refinements then I'd buy one. 13" + 15" screen option, 2-3 USB C ports in the little hatch, a "body notch" for magsafe, smaller bezels but still aluminium and matching the rest of the body colour, full trackpad with no left/right buttons.
Basically todays MacBook Air with a tapered/slightly rounded design and no glass bezel/notch.
They’re referring to the “port door” that was on the original 2008 model only.
The very next iteration of the Air swapped that out for standard ports along the side of the machine.
I think the poster was referring to the ports-behind-a-door design aspect. That was visually cool, but I always imagined it might be a pain.
If only Apple still cared about making the worlds thinnest laptop
Good. Maybe they could celebrate by turning the current “air” back into an actual *air*. The 11” MBA was my second favourite Mac ever - after the 12” PowerBook 😍. As the kids say, IYKYK.
I got the first model on release day. It was my second laptop ever, my first being a iBook G3. I only use a Mac Studio or iPad Pro nowadays.
From what we’re hearing the next Macbook Pro redesign is supposed to be thinner than the present model.
It’s nice to feel nostalgic for things that excited us in the past. But as has been already pointed out upthread the original Macbook Air had drawbacks that were barely, if at all, tolerable back in the day and would be totally unacceptable today. At the time the state of hardware and tech wasn’t yet up to the promise of the original design. But it did evolve and got better although the hardware was never what it needed to be. That wouldn’t happen until the M-series chips came along.
As someone mentioned upthread there is a similar sense of nostalgia when it comes to classic cars. In their day rhey were common and not quite as noticeable, but today their scarcity makes them seem even more desirable and distinctly different from what we have today. But driving a classic car is not like driving something contemporary—it’s quite different. And the maintenance and upkeep wasn’t like today either. Tires didn’t last nearly as long, carburetors had to be adjusted, no anti-lock brakes, often no power steering or brakes, and often no air conditioning. Go back far enough and you had vacuum powered windshield wipers.
Several years ago I overhead someone tell my father, “They don’t build cars like they used to.” to which Dad replied, “Thank God. How often do you see cars with a flat tire or stalled at the side of the road? Tires didn’t last. Cars rusted out in no time. Today you can go 100,000 km. without a tune up.”
I loved my first iMac, a 2001 G3 in Indigo. It was cool and exciting and worked well. But compared to today it would be a joke in terms of performance and capability. And look at all the griping around here when Apple brought colours back to the iMac—nonstop whining that it wasn’t a serious computer and looked like a toy. And yet most anyone who bought one seems to really like their iMac. I know I really like my M3 iMac.
The current Macbook Air lineup might not look as cutting edge in design, but it is a first-class computer with nothing to apologize for. And while it might not look much different from mainstream laptops its construction and finish are light years better giving it a solid premium look and feel.
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I miss Steve's showmanship during those live events. Sure, the demos didn't always go perfectly but at least they weren't as robotic or predictable as the pre-recorded events we have now.
Absolute GOAT design. All the Air needed was smaller bezels around the screen.
Time for my regular plea to bring back the 12” rMB only with a 13” screen due to much smaller bezels and with a normal keyboard. I could even forgive a single USB-C in a laptop below 1 kg and with tapered design.
The notch is staying, though. Whether we want it to or not. If MBP gets rid of it in 2026, Air might lose it in 2027.