The MacBook Air Turns 17 Today

[swm]

I still own the first design but with 128GB SSD (Mid 2009).

I regret selling mine in 2015 very much. it was perfect, I only had to replace the speaker because it suddenly went silent. but other this minor fault, I loved it. strangely enough the original air had more connectivity compared to the new one introduced in 2018 (with 2xtype-c ports in total and unlit apple logo).

sure it just had a single usb2.0 (beautifully hidden in this flip down thingie on the right side) but it had dedicated micro-DVI and a separate magsafe1. so w/o any extra attachment it could be connected to a power source, a monitor and external keyboard/mouse at the same time. and the old L-shaped MagSafe connector was far less protruding than the later generations.

the original MacBook Air was a piece of art and truly innovative engineering.

 

[maruyama]

That's ours

I had to come here to comment on this as well; chefs-kiss on this bit of MR illustration.

 

[JohannesO]

Fun fact: they cut the song up a bit which you can kinda hear if you listen. The original lyrics were:

I'm guessing Apple didn't want that last line associated with them basically redefining an entire product category, plus the instrumentation also better ramps up in anticipation of the ending.

I know, right?

 

[navaira]

I hold firm that pound for pound the M1 MBA is the single greatest computer Apple has ever made, it is the jack of all trades.

Hear hear. Upgrading from the 2020 Intel to 2020 M1 was like upgrading by a decade. I think keeping the design was a genius move as well. Nothing’s changed except everything.

 

[awshucks]

If it had ProMotion it would be the perfect laptop.

That’s the reason why the MacBook Pro has Pro in the name. The same Pro as ProMotion. Also ProMotion is the same word as promotion, as in trying to promote sales of the more expensive laptops 🙃

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Incredible how a 17 year old design is still better than today's "design".

It was the origin of the laptop industrial design Apple still uses. (The "unibody aluminum" design.)

It is amazing how "current" it looks - from the outside. If it had dual USB-C instead of USB-A and mini DisplayPort, and the MagSafe were updated to the latest, the design would look like it absolutely belonged today.

I have a second-generation one and it's still quite usable. Running Mac OS X 10.6, it boots up in about 10 seconds, and the web browser Arctic Fox (A Firefox port for older Mac OS) is quite usable on most websites. 2 GB RAM and a 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo with Nvidia GeForce 9400 is fine. YouTube even runs 720p videos acceptably as long as you force the mobile interface.

 

[quietstormSD]

Steve Jobs was a true and indisputably the greatest showman. The highly produced product launch videos we have today cannot match what Steve Jobs did with just a black backdrop in front of a live crowd. I feel bad for younger generations that will only see highly produced crap we have now moving into total AI crap we will get in the future.

 

[VisceralRealist]

I was 4 when this laptop came out, but I’ve watched that keynote. It must have been an amazing moment in real-time. It has gone down in history for a reason.

That’s the reason why the MacBook Pro has Pro in the name. The same Pro as ProMotion. Also ProMotion is the same word as promotion, as in trying to promote sales of the more expensive laptops 🙃

True, but if the rumors about the non-Pro iPhone 17 models getting ProMotion are true, maybe we will start to see ProMotion on more products (even ones without “Pro” in the name). Maybe they’ll have to rename it to just “Motion”.

 

[awshucks]

I was 4 when this laptop came out, but I’ve watched that keynote. It must have been an amazing moment in real-time. It has gone down in history for a reason.



True, but if the rumors about the non-Pro iPhone 17 models getting ProMotion are true, maybe we will start to see ProMotion on more products (even ones without “Pro” in the name). Maybe they’ll have to rename it to just “Motion”.

Well, Apple already has Motion (it’s their After Effects competitor)

Apple put the A17 Pro in the iPad mini, so maybe they’ll keep the ProMotion name.

 

[DMG35]

That’s the reason why the MacBook Pro has Pro in the name. The same Pro as ProMotion. Also ProMotion is the same word as promotion, as in trying to promote sales of the more expensive laptops 🙃

Lol no I totally get it and know they wouldn't put promotion in the air. For me once you go with Promotion its difficult to go without and and if the Air had it it would be a no brainer for me.

 

[artifex]

The 11 inch debuted as part of the second generation, which was released in October 2010. That's the model that most people got to know and love, as it had a lower price, SSD as standard, and more ports on the sides of the Air.

I wish we could get a current 11 or even 12 inch device running OSX. I may still have to get one of the 13 inch M2 or M3 ones on sale; they're cheaper than my 2006/2007 13 inch Macbooks were, which is amazing given inflation. On the other hand, those were user-upgradeable, and the glowing white logo on black was dead sexy.

 

[svish]

A long time ago. Have a 2015 model and 15" M2, they are really good computers. Waiting to see the upcoming model. OLED for the Air will be some time away. Also loved the glowing logo on the older models. Sadly it won't be coming back

 

[Liam Steven]

I still own the first design but with 128GB SSD (Mid 2009).
And it still works great!!!!
I keep it with Snow Leopard, and it works like a charm.

Never regret owning one

Appreciate it may not be your daily machine, but how have you coped with Root CA expirations and the death of major web browsers for this version OS?

 

[Hillstones]

I dont think Apple or anyone on tech has reveal products like steve jobs. I know it sounds dumb in these days but when he took the laptop out of the yellow envelop that was jaw dropping. The same way he took the iPod out of the small jean pocket asking who ever uses that. We need that again....

Don't forget the Blue & White G3 in which he opened the side door like a drawbridge to reveal the entire motherboard and drives, and said, 'We call it a door'.

 

[Hillstones]

It was genius marketing to have Steve pull it out of an office transit-envelope with one hand.
I'm not truly convinced the transit-envelope wasn't specially made for the reveal. But still. The message it sent, when normal laptops of the time were about an inch thick in places and weighed several kilos, was incredible.

Inter-Office envelopes were that big. It was not specially made for the reveal. They were designed to hold a large amount of 8x11 pieces of paper, so they were oversized compared to a regular mailing envelope. These were transported around an office by hand, by a courier. Before email.

 

[Hillstones]

Worst computer ever. Couldn't handle video playback without overheating and stuttering. Criminally underpowered. It was the classic Apple first generation product.

Inaccurate statement. The hard drive base model was slow, but it had no problem with video playback and it did not overheat or stutter. It was not criminally underpowered since it had the current Intel Core 2 Duo, which ran cooler than the PowerBook G4. This person is confusing the MacBook Air with the 12" MacBook that had the Intel Core M processor. That was the model that was criminally slow.

 

[Hillstones]

I still have a 2012 11" MacBook Air with an OWC 1TB SSD and macOS Catalina. Still runs great with a new battery and plenty fast for basic stuff. Love how small and slim it is.

The current design loses the entire appeal of the MacBook Air, and it is more closely similar to the MacBook Pro, which is not much heavier than the current Air.

 

[Digital Dude]

Tim has always struck me as a mortuary owner or a meat inspector would be Food and Drug Administration. 👨‍🔬

 

[Hillstones]

The original MacBook Air was impressive in size, but NOT in performance.

The current MacBook Air is impressive in BOTH size and performance.

Love my Air.

The performance was only hindered on the early models because of the 4,200 RPM spinning hard drive, same drive used in the iPods. Models with the SSD were fast, but expensive. When later models had the significant price drop and SSDs standard, they were great Macs, and still are, except for the current design. The current design no longer has the slim appeal of the Air.

 

[navaira]

I love reading the old reviews. There I am wishing my fingernail-sized 1 TB microSD card had higher transfer rates than its mere 72/96 MB/s or whatever it is. Check out this 29.5 MB/s average:

Review Apple MacBook Air Subnotebook

Comprehensive review of the Apple MacBook Air notebook (Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz / Intel GMA X3100) with a variety of measurements, benchmarks, and rating

www.notebookcheck.net

You could indeed upgrade from 80GB 4200rpm to 64GB SSD for mere $1,300! Boot time down to only 28.5 seconds!

The overall disk test scores aren't much different—29.37 on the HDD and 34.30 on the Air. But the SSD performs a fair amount worse than the HDD model when it comes to sequential read and write tests. The SSD was able to write sequentially between 14.67 and 13.86MB/sec, and sequentially read between 7.29 and 49.59MB/sec (the first and second numbers are differentiated by the size of the blocks being written). Comparatively, the HDD model sequentially writes between 31.35 and 33.33MB/sec, and reads between 6.32 and 32.74MB/sec for the same-sized blocks. […] However, one major difference I saw while using the SSD model is that it didn't suffer entire machine slowdowns when there was a lot of disk activity—or at least less so than the HDD model.

No spin: Ars reviews the MacBook Air with solid state drive

The MacBook Air's high-end model comes with 200 extra MHz and a solid state …

arstechnica.com

This was 2008. The base storage seventeen years later on a M3 Macbook Air is only 4x more, 256 GB. How many times larger is the macOS itself? (Although admittedly you can’t spend extra $1,300 on a Macbook Air today because it only costs $1,000 to max it out with 24 GB RAM and 2 TB storage…)

 

[Mac mini power user]

I wish we could get a current 11 or even 12 inch device running OSX. I may still have to get one of the 13 inch M2 or M3 ones on sale; they're cheaper than my 2006/2007 13 inch Macbooks were, which is amazing given inflation. On the other hand, those were user-upgradeable, and the glowing white logo on black was dead sexy.

The 11-inch MacBook Air (actually 11.6 inch) would now be closer to 13-inch given the current bezels. Actually, if they returned to a tapered design for the MacBook Air, then a redesigned 13-inch would be quite close in terms of length and depth of an old 11-inch. People tend to forget how large the bezels were before the first Retina MacBook Pro.

 

[W.O.P.R.]

I dont think Apple or anyone on tech has reveal products like steve jobs. I know it sounds dumb in these days but when he took the laptop out of the yellow envelop that was jaw dropping. The same way he took the iPod out of the small jean pocket asking who ever uses that. We need that again....

Unless you saw Digital do the exact same envelope gag 13 years earlier (1995) in what was a very well known commercial at the time for their Hinote line of laptops. Even that was supposedly a knock off of an earlier use of the reveal, by TI or Tandy, I believe, but I have not seen that one myself.

Commercial for Digital Equipment HiNote Ultra from 1995 : Digital Equipment Corporation : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

© Copyright Digital Equipment Corporation 1995. All rights reserved

archive.org

 

[TurboJobo]

Unless you saw Digital do the exact same envelope gag 13 years earlier (1995) in what was a very well known commercial at the time for their Hinote line of laptops. Even that was supposedly a knock off of an earlier use of the reveal, by TI or Tandy, I believe, but I have not seen that one myself.

Commercial for Digital Equipment HiNote Ultra from 1995 : Digital Equipment Corporation : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

© Copyright Digital Equipment Corporation 1995. All rights reserved

archive.org

i was 3-4 years old lol

 

[ducknalddon]

What is an interoffice envelope?

It was used in bigger companies when you needed to send documents to someone else in the organisation. You would write the name of the recipient on the envelope, put you documents in it then leave it in an out tray on your desk. Someone from the mail room would collect it and deliver it to the recipient and drop off any documents sent to you in your in tray.

You can still buy the envelopes so I'm guessing some companies still use them.