On January 29, 2008, the MacBook Air reached all eyes, a laptop that came to dazzle many users, or at least to show the world that there was another new generation of laptops, laptops that could really be taken anywhere, that could be comfortable and of course that could be beautiful. This is certainly one of the right eyes of the late Steve Jobs.
We are going to do a little review about the history of the MacBook Air, a laptop that has become a reference in the entire market for a long time, but without a doubt already crying out for a renovation.
Within his usual show, Steve Jobs had the idea of taking a laptop out of the typical portfolio… how was that possible? It was, Apple wanted to give a twist, its true hit was several years before also with a laptop that dazzled locals and strangers, and without a doubt it was going to do it again with another laptop. Leaving behind the Pro range, which needed no introduction, it was time to show what Apple was capable of in terms of design. This is how what was undoubtedly the most attractive and thin laptop on the market arrived. All this had a problem, the most recurrent in the Cupertino company, the price was around 2.500 euros.
What the MacBook did good for the industry
Yet it had its appeal, the main one above the design with premium materials and supreme lightness, was that it came accompanied by an SSD drive, the discs that currently seem mandatory within a Mac and any high-end PC, at that time were neither there nor expected in a laptop, as always Apple arrived a few years before and forced brands to bet on slightly faster hard drives.
But not only the brands looked askance, users began to know that the SSD made the operating system fly directly, they saw that with less hardware at the processor and RAM level, the laptop behaved much better than what others showed. more power ... Was this the SSD revolution? Possibly. However, the time had come to popularize what became known as the Ultrabook, an environment in which despite many tried, only Apple was able to succeed, in fact brands have ended up notably succumbing over the years in this range.
However, another section that manufacturers already considered lost, that of autonomy, was also notably exploding, and that is Steve Jobs promised 12 hours of use on a single charge thanks to its battery system adapted to the design of the device. It really fulfilled it, beyond the fact that Apple MacBooks have always had a good behavior when it comes to battery, is that the MacBook gave what it promised, it was the correct dance between hardware, software and batteries. In fact, users also began to demand more battery, and it is something that brands today promote as a fundamental part of their laptops.
The damage the MacBook did to the industry
Muchos asked to see the head of the Apple CEO roll when he certified the death of the optical CD drive in a laptop. It was something that we still could not understand, I still remember when I opted for my Sony VAIO instead of the MacBook Air because the former had a Blu-Ray reader while the Air had not even the ability to read a sad DVD. And what reason was good Steve, I never got to use the optical drive in more than five years of use. Many said that the company was crazy, that nobody would want a laptop with so little external connectivity ... what does this remind us of? Well, precisely to your current MacBook Pro that only has a few USB-C connections. A move that was too daring but in the end other brands were added and the DVD reader is almost non-existent today in laptops of these characteristics, in fact many users choose to replace these units with ports for SSD or HDD.
The paralysis of the growth of the resolution on the screenWhile in televisions and monitors more resolution tended to be better, Apple chose to paralyze this growth, the resolution of the MacBook Air was not up to par, an LED-backlit screen of 11.6 inches (1.366 x 768) or 13.3 inches (1.440 x 900).
In the same area as the disappearance of the ports, the USB and the minijack that it had later, some more were added, they were completely insufficient in a computing landscape where connection ports were still more than necessary. And this is how the MacBook Air turns almost ten years old, a laptop that changed the industry.