The MacBook Air Turns 17 Today
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Air 17 years ago today at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, captivating audiences with a groundbreaking design that set new industry standards.
Jobs famously revealed the MacBook Air by pulling it out of an interoffice envelope to emphasize its unprecedentedly slim profile. The original model featured a 13.3-inch display, Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and an optional 64GB solid-state drive, which was a rarity for consumer laptops in 2008, in a sleek aluminum unibody design. It lacked features considered standard at the time, such as an optical drive and Ethernet port. The single headphone, USB, and Micro-DVI ports popped out of a small door on the right of the machine. Jobs said:
We've built the world's thinnest notebook — without sacrificing a full-size keyboard or a full-size 13-inch display. When you first see MacBook Air, it's hard to believe it's a high-performance notebook with a full-size keyboard and display. But it is.
Seventeen years later, the MacBook Air remains a cornerstone of the Mac lineup, providing the entry-level point for customers who want an Apple laptop. In 2020, Apple brought its own custom silicon processor to the MacBook Air in the form of the M1 chip, enabling a massive leap in performance and energy efficiency. It completely redesigned the machine in 2022, and added a 15-inch model in 2024. In the first half of this year, Apple is expected to bring its latest-generation M-series chips to the device.
Popular Stories
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has high expectations for Apple's first foldable iPhone.
In his Power On newsletter today, he said the foldable iPhone will be "the most significant overhaul in the iPhone's history."
"iPhone 4, iPhone 6 and iPhone X were clearly a big deal, but this is a whole new design," he said.
Like Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7, the foldable iPhone will reportedly open up like ...
March has been an incredibly busy month for Apple, with the company unveiling more than 10 new products and accessories. We said hello to the MacBook Neo at the start of the month, and we bid farewell to the Mac Pro at the end of it.
Nevertheless, there is still a lot more to come this year.
Beyond the usual annual updates to iPhones and Apple Watches, Apple's all-new smart home hub is...
Apple is expected to release two new iPhone apps this year, including an Apple Business app and a Siri app with chatbot-like functionality.
With the Apple Business app, employees at businesses using the new Apple Business platform will be able to install apps for work, view contact information for colleagues, and request support. Apple Business is launching on April 14, and it replaces Apple ...
Popular Stories
Apple will update the MacBook Air with an OLED display for its 2028 model, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Writing in his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman says that he expects the MacBook Air's transition from LCD to OLED to occur with the product's 2028 update, as part of a larger migration to OLED across the company's flagship iPad and MacBook models that includes the iPad mini,...
Apple on Monday unveiled the iPhone 17e and an updated iPad Air, but it is not finished yet. Apple promised "a big week ahead," and it is expected to announce additional new products this Tuesday, March 3 and Wednesday, March 4.
The most likely possibilities for Tuesday include updated 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models with the M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro...
Apple today announced refreshed MacBook Air models featuring the M5 chip and a higher base SSD capacity.
The M5 chip in the MacBook Air features a 10-core CPU, with what Apple calls the world's fastest CPU cores. It offers configurations with up to 10 GPU cores with Neural Accelerators in each core, delivering up to 4x faster performance for AI tasks than the MacBook Air with the M4 chip.
...
