“It was introduced in 2008 and it changed Apple’s philosophy on the notebook market,” Michael Gartenberg writes for Macworld.com.
“It was a radical departure for Apple, getting rid of an optical drive, using a battery that users couldn’t replace, offering a solid-state drive for the first time in an Apple laptop,” Gartenberg writes. “Like many devices, it had to be seen and held to be really appreciated.”
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Gartenberg writes, “It’s likely that we’ll see more of the MacBook Air’s features make their way into the rest of the MacBook line, including the current Pro models. And I expect that every other Mac model will evolve in a similar fashion, as Apple continues to fuse the personal computer and digital appliance into a seamless ecosystem that consumers will embrace.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Imagine Steve/Tim on snl
I believe he is able to rule Apple, maybe not as well as Steve Jobs (it was his empire) but close enough. Anyway, i believe that Steve Jobs will be his shadow on every move.
The air is gorgeous, I do not think you can go anywhere else design wise regarding laptops. It’s as thin as can be practical.
I think the Apple desktop model will be an ultra thin i-Mac. And their most popular computer form factor will continue be the iPhone.
Steve is still with us, still helping Tim Cook and Apple and we’ll get the benefit of Steve’s vision as long as humanly possible. Be grateful for that. Meanwhile you know the planning has been afoot for some time keeping Apple’s lead for years to come. The guys who will take over will no doubt want to prove to the world they are worthy to the task.
Meanwhile, I can’t wait for the updated non-optical drive Mac Book Pros and Thunderbolted Mac Pro. 2012 will be a freaking insanely great Apple year. The fruits of Steve’s labor up to this point have only begun to yield their most delicious fruit.
I’d love to own an Air. But I gotta have an integrated optical drive.
I’m not in dire need of an optical drive. At a pinch I could buy a $80 USB attached drive, but Apple should then cut the cost of the MBP by $100 like they did the Mac mini to compensate.
You want a $100 cut in price so you can buy an $80 optical drive. Apple didn’t get to the top making deals like that.
You want to make a profit on your secondary purchase. You Ferengies are all alike.
I don’t see what I’ve proposed is any different from what Apple did with the latest generation Mac mini. Dropped $100 off and removed the optical drive.
I think people should stop questioning ballmers left nut.
Castrate the little boy
Sick fucking little boy
The MacBook Air was labeled by the tech pundits as likely being a massive failure due to all the missing features that users took for granted. Tech-heads are only interested in adding features, never taking them away. They have some odd notion that the more stuff you can pack into a device the more useful it is. For the tech-head, maybe, but I don’t think that holds true for the average consumer.
I honestly don’t see how a notebook computer could ever be equal to, in all respects, a fully-equipped desktop computer and still be compact, have long battery life and be lightweight. At some point, there needs to be compromises made on which features can be excluded. Optical drives and spinning hard drives seem be be an easy choice to exclude as far as I’m concerned.
I hope they don’t sacrifice thinness for the user’s ability to swap out RAM and the hard drive on the present generation of MBP. I don’t mind if they transition the MBP line towards the MBA design but not at the cost of giving up some degree of control over the final composition of hardware which is easy enough to remove and change in the MBP right now. Apple’s RAM upgrade costs are just insane.
I have the same concern. I have a bad feeling Apple is going to eliminate my Ford GT in favor of the Yugo.
Finally a decent article about the future of the Mac. The Air really represents everything Apple have been able to achieve in streamlining the Mac footprint.
The important point they make in the article is that Apple have been able to restore the power of a standard laptop in a lightweight machine. They obviously lead the industry in this and only bodes for lighter more efficient machines in the future.