Apple released a legendary product line on January 15, 2008, exactly 15 years ago. The product is the MacBook Air, which is iconic because of an envelope.
Yes, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO at the time, showed off the MacBook Air by removing it from a manila envelope to show its thinness. Since then, the MacBook Air has become one of Apple's most popular products, even if the journey hasn't been smooth sailing.
"We made the world's thinnest notebook -- without sacrificing a full-size keyboard or 13-inch screen. When you first see the MacBook Air, it's hard to believe that this is a high-performance notebook with a full-size keyboard and screen," Jobs said at the launch event in the Macworld Expo.
A notebook with a very thin body -- in its time -- had a thickness of 4mm at its thinnest. However, there is one weakness of the first version of the MacBook Air, namely that the standard storage still uses a hard disk, which has a capacity of only 80GB.
Indeed there is a variant with SSD, but at a much more expensive price. Namely adding USD 1,300 for an SSD with a capacity of only 64GB, we were quoted as saying from 9to5Mac, Monday (16/1/2023).
The first generation MacBook Air received various positive and negative reviews. The positive reviews are of course the very iconic design. But the negative is in performance and battery life. The performance of the notebook is said to be the slowest Mac compared to the line of Macs of the same age.
However, Apple continues to maintain this line and continues to update it, such as increasing the specs 9 months after it was first released, and slightly changing the design a year later, including releasing a new variant that has an 11.6 inch screen.
The design was maintained through the years and Apple only updated the specifications. This line was abandoned in 2015 because Apple focused on working on the 12-inch MacBook, which was considered a failed product.
The big change for the new MacBook Air occurred in 2018, when they changed the design and replaced the screen panel with a Retina Display, like the MacBook Pro line.
Then in 2020, the MacBook Air became the first Apple laptop to migrate to Apple Silicon and leave behind the Intel processors that have been their mainstay for years. This migration to Apple Silicon has proven to be a very significant upgrade for the MacBook Air line, because it offers great power but has very efficient power consumption.
It wasn't until 2022 that the MacBook Air got a design change back. This time following the design style of other Apple products. That is a flat surface, similar to the iPad Pro lineup. This series also marks the return of the MagSafe port for charging.
In the future, what else does Apple want to present to the MacBook Air. That said, they want to release the MacBook Air with a 15 inch screen. But to find out, we have to wait until Apple actually releases the product.
