MacBook Air: The First Ultrabook Turns 4

Four years ago Apple took its 1.1" thick 13.3" consumer MacBook and put it on a serious diet. The new model, designated the MacBook Air, eliminated the built-in optical drive that pre-G3 PowerBooks had in the mid-1990s, went from a polycarbonate case to machined aluminum, ditched that traditional 2.5" notebook hard drive for a 1.8" iPod hard drive, and reduced thickness to 0.76" and weight to 3.0 lb. without losing the full-size keyboard or the 13.3" 1280 x 800 display. Since then, things have only improved with SSDs replacing hard drives, more efficient processors, and even a smaller version with an 11.6" screen.

Today we look back at what Apple wrought in January 2008 with the computer that created the Ultrabook category that the PC world is just starting to embrace.

Steve Watkins (The Practical Mac): When the original MacBook Air (MBA) was released, I violated my own rule regarding Apple technology purchases: purchase only refurbished units from the Apple Store online. But the MBA was so innovative and compelling, it virtually demanded I purchase a brand new one from the Apple website. In all fairness, the purchase was for my wife who needed a lightweight, portable Mac. At the time, we shared an original Intel iMac. My wife needed her own Mac, preferably a notebook, but it needed to ultra-portable. The MBA fit the bill. Incredibly thin and unprecedentedly lightweight, it was the perfect Mac for her. She is currently on her second MBA (fortunately we were able to return to our tried and true habit of buying refurbished for the next MBA).

I will admit, I was initially a bit skeptical when the MBA was announced. I felt Apple had shrunk it the wrong direction, making it thinner instead of reducing the footprint. At the time, I would not have purchased one for myself due to this. However, as time went by and my wife used her MBA, I became a convert. Once again, it proved one of Steve Jobs' maxims: People don't really know what they want until you put it in their hands.

Brian Gray (Fruitful Editing): When I saw the first images of the original MacBook Air, I didn't get it. It looked fragile and was seriously lacking in connectivity. I thought Apple had made the computer a bit too small this time, and a revision would get a little "fatter" and add some of the functionality back in. I was a skeptical of the machine's future, to say the least.

That changed recently when I went to an Apple Store for the first time. I had plenty of time, because my wife and I were waiting on a Genius appointment. I looked at the 11.6" Air and the 13.3" Air. I picked them up; I marveled at the fine detail of the unibody construction. I had to have one someday.

The Air is one of those products we didn't realized we needed until Apple put it in our hands.

Charles Moore (several columns): My "whelmedness" with the original MacBook Air four years ago was lowly under, so to speak. I'm a consummate laptop fan, and to paraphrase an aphorism, there are no bad Apple laptops, but some are better than others, and the skinny little power-challenged, port-deprived original Air with its iPod hard drive, downsized processor, and poky graphics support was definitely second-tier in my estimation. An Apple netbook by any other name, only with a non-swappable battery and absurdly limited connectivity, and a carriage-trade price. Dropping the internal optical drive and having the optional freestanding SuperDrive join the queue for the already oversubscribed single USB 2.0 port seemed almost gratuitously sadistic.

The Air seemed to me like an exercise in "because we can" engineering - essentially an engineering parlor-trick cynically calculated to pry more money out of the wallets of those who strive to surf the curl of the bleeding edge.

My opinion of the Air mellowed somewhat with subsequent revisions of the original form factor model, as it got faster CPU silicon and better graphics support that made it a light duty alternative for a serious computer rather than a novelty gimmick. However, not nearly enough to make me consider buying an Air.

However, that all changed in October 2010 with the release of the second-generation Air. I didn't get through reading the press release before I developed a case of the wanna-have-its. If there was ever a candidate for most-improved Apple notebook model in one generation change, the Revision B Air would have to be it. Overnight, the MacBook Air ascended from off the bottom of my system acquisition short list to share the top slot with the 13" MacBook Pro, and that's where it has remained ever since. I'm still not 100% decided which of those two I will choose for my next workhorse laptop, but over the past couple of months I've been tilting more and more toward the Air.

Of course, if I hold off for a half-year or so and purchase a new unit, the dilemma of choice may become moot. Scuttlebutt has it that with the release of Ivy Bridge powered models, Apple will slenderize the entire MacBook lineup, with all models sharing MacBook Air skinny wedge styling, and the 13" MacBook Pro essentially being merged with and subsumed into the 13" MacBook Air, leaving all new 15" and 17" models to share the "Pro" designation.

It's also expected that all models will likely ship sans optical drives and be equipped with standard solid state drives. Hopefully, SSD capacity will be increased somewhat with prices benefiting from economies of scale, but I expect this is the future.

My exposure to the world of iPad computing over the past seven months has also caused my thinking to evolve substantially. I hadn't previously imagined I could get along with a 128 GB or going forward even a 256 GB SSD, but whether we like it or not, the Cloud is looming larger. I use Dropbox intensively now for work-in-progress stuff, picked up a free 50 GB Box.net account late last year, and I also have 2 TB, 1 TB, and two 500 GB external hard drives, one of the latter being a compact Apricorn NetDock unit incorporating a tray-loading DVD burner optical drive as well, which seems tailor-made for use with the MacBook Air.

I still don't think tablet computing and touchscreens are the answer for production computing. Both the hardware and the iOS are too seriously compromised in the interest of appealing to non-geek users and likely will remain so. But I have been seduced by the advantages of hyper-portable, instant on computing, and the MacBook Air seems more and more like the ideal have your cake and eat it too alternative. I'm not even ruling out an 11.6-incher.

Dan Knight (Mac Musings): I have to agree that the original MacBook Air was impressive for its size but depressing for its performance. Combine a 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo processor - slower than any Mac of its time - with a pathetically slow iPod hard drive, and you have a proof of concept machine that few are going to buy. Then make the SSD version a whopping $2,499, and few would choose it over a 15" MacBook Pro with its awesome power and huge storage space.

Getting rid of the slow hard drive was the best thing Apple could do, and releasing an even smaller, less expensive version was the icing on the cake. Granted, hardly anyone should buy a Mac with 2 GB of system memory and 64 GB of storage nowadays, but the point is that you can buy a MacBook Air for just $999.

Ad good as the Late 2010 version was, the 2011 update was even better - Core i5 and i7 CPUs gave them plenty of power, and Thunderbolt gives them the expansion potential that previous versions, limited to USB 2.0, simply didn't have. Then throw in an SD Card slot on the 13" MBA, and you've got a cheap way to add storage without carrying a USB drive. If I were in the market for a Mac notebook, the 13" model with 128 GB would probably meet my needs.

Kudos to Apple for taking a great concept and improving it from one generation to the next until it became practically perfect!

Dan Bashur (Apple, Tech, and Gaming): With the release of the MacBook Air just 4 years ago and the first iconic ads that appeared depicting the wafer thin device fitting into a manila business envelope, no one could fathom how far the MacBook Air would come since its groundbreaking inception. As stunning as the thinness of the unit was, it came from humble roots which began with little connectivity (just one USB 2.0 port and no FireWire, one analog headphone out, and a micro DVI graphics output) while also being outfitted with the Intel GMA X3100 graphics chipset (which left much to be desired), greatly limiting its multimedia capabilities.

All of that would change with one breakthrough after another, but perhaps the most impressive was the most recent release from mid-2011 that includes Core "i" processors, backlit keyboard, and a Thunderbolt Port, which provides much improved processing while allowing access to many connective options that didn't exist before (such as FireWire, USB 3.0, and even ExpressCard 34, courtesy of adapters), although it is limited to running OS X 10.7 Lion and later. The Late 2010 model that coincidentally includes the superior GeForce 320M integrated graphics also runs Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, so you have to pick and choose what you need the most between the Mid 2011 and Late 2010 models - connectivity or compatibility, respectively. Beginning in late 2010, the 11.6" MacBook Air also was an option, and it is arguably the best replacement to the 12" PowerBook G4, which I proudly own.

At the end of the day, the MacBook Air continues to revolutionize how we operate. It's the middle step between a tablet and a full featured notebook, which PC manufacturers are trying to mimic in the "Ultrabook" category - and I doubt if any manufacture will outdo the sheer ingenuity of the Air. The most recent version of the MacBook Air has plenty of features and muscle to beat down any cheap netbook that stands in its way, and with the advent of the aforementioned PC Ultrabooks, it obvious why the netbook thing is, how do I put it, so 27 seconds ago.

One of the memories that has stuck with me when it comes to the MacBook Air was when an Apple Store employee performed a demonstration where he opened up every application installed on the new MacBook Air simultaneously (roughly a dozen or so applications) to demonstrate how fast the memory shifts between the bus and the SSD. The MacBook Air quickly populated all of the windows for each application and brought everything up almost immediately, courtesy of the direct line connection from the system bus to the memory and SSD, while a 13" MacBook Pro outfitted with the same amount of memory and a standard 5400 RPM SATA hard drive could not come close to mustering the strength to perform the task and essentially crashed.

Clearly, the MacBook Air is a great, fuller featured alternative to the iPad (from a portability perspective) that arguably handles multitasking even better than traditional Mac notebooks, but with most things, there's a catch. Without the ability to upgrade the memory, I'm still a bit of a skeptic if it could be a long term replacement compared to a 13" MacBook Pro, which is also very lightweight and portable and can also gain the ability to multitask much better by replacing the standard hard drive with a fast 6 Gb/s SSD, while gaining even more connection options and still technically retains the ability to run Snow Leopard (all 2011 versions). When a MacBook Air with a Retina touch display (maybe even a 3D display) with the same keyboard and touchpad exists while gaining removable and upgradable memory I may finally be sold myself in lieu of an iPad.