MacBook Air turns 15: A short history of a revolutionary notebook

The Air defied the conventional laptop design.

It wasn’t an ordinary moment when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the world’s thinnest laptop of its time. The launch of the MacBook Air sent waves through the PC industry, which had anticipated nothing quite as thin and light from Cupertino. The Air was just three quarters of an inch thick — thin enough to fit inside an envelope — amazingly light, and different from the most popular ultra-compact laptops in the market at that time.

To be sure, the MacBook Air wasn’t the first lightweight notebook. Sony and Hewlett-Packard (HP) were already making ultra-portable laptops — but they could not reduce the size, or even manage to match up to the technology that Apple implemented to produce high-end, extremely portable notebooks at scale.

Back in 1998, HP had released its Sojourn OmniBook, which had a metallic case and was less than an inch thick. Apple, however, wanted to compete with the Sony Vaio TZ series, the best among the premium ultra-light notebooks, which featured a tapered, 3-pound design similar to that of the Air. Apple created a wedge-shaped notebook whose thickest portion was the thinnest part of the TZ series. Sony’s inability to innovate allowed Apple to build a notebook that was not only sleek and powerful but also cost hundreds of dollars less than the competition. Popular among travellers and executives, the MacBook Air gave Apple entry into the premium ultraportable notebook segment, which hit Sony the hardest.

But Apple wasn’t merely eyeing the ultra high-end notebook segment.

The MacBook Air was Apple’s long-term play at mainstreaming the entire lightweight laptop segment that had been reserved for premium consumers. The launch of the Air was seen as a breath of fresh air in the laptop segment.

Around this time, the PC market was seeing a shift, with the cheaper, small, plasticky, low-cost notebooks from Asus being all the rage. The so-called “Netbook” segment was booming, and every big PC brand was betting on low-powered systems to increase sales and reach out to first-time computer users, especially students. But Apple took a direction that was different from the crowd’s.

The Air was neither competing with Lenovo’s ThinkPad business notebook nor aimed to take on Asus’ line of Eee Pcs — it was positioned somewhere in between. The Air was an industrial design marvel, a premium notebook made from metal aluminium chassis, the screen was 13.3 inches with an LED-backlit display, the keyboard was full-size and also backlit, and the glass trackpad felt smooth. The Air ignited interest among ‘aspiration’ consumers who neither wanted to spend $3,000 on an ultraportable system nor were comfortable settling for low-cost notebooks.

The response was divided at first, but later versions addressed the criticism.

Although critics raved about the first-generation MacBook Air for its design, it was panned for being less practical. It had limited storage, no internal optical drive, a single USB-A port, a non-replaceable battery, and the hefty $1,799 starting price.

In 2011, Apple did the unthinkable and introduced a new model of the MacBook Air with an 11-inch display and a $999 price tag. It was an immediate hit — and the notebook, once limited to niche product status, started to upend the ultra-portable segment as sales grew and more models were launched. Lenovo, Dell, HP, Asus and Acer all offer ultra-portable Windows notebooks now, but have still not been able to produce a true competitor to the MacBook Air.

Over the years, Cupertino did a lot of things right with the Air, which is Apple’s most popular Mac and the world’s best-selling 13-inch notebook. Not only did Apple improve its manufacturing process to keep producing the ultra-portable notebook with a premium unibody aluminum design at scale, but also invented new ways to make the Air accessible.

Education is perhaps one of the biggest segments that drive the sales of the MacBook Air. Unlike other PC brands, Apple didn’t cut corners to compromise on hardware or design to sell a cheap version of Air to students. Instead, Apple continued selling older versions of the Air alongside offering student discounts that drove the sales of the notebook in developing markets like India that were critical for its growth in later years. A notebook that did not hang (a common problem with Windows laptops), lasted longer on a single charge, ran macOS, and had access to Apple-made apps were among the reasons for the Air’s enduring appeal among both students and average users. Apple marketed the Air as a creative tool rather than just another laptop.

Competition to the Air comes from Apple’s own iPad.

The MacBook Air is among Apple’s longest-running products, and continues to have a loyal following. The recent launch of the redesigned Air with M2 processor shows that it remains an important product that holds both commercial and sentimental value.

While the Air is not yet at the stage where Apple might want to discontinue it, under CEO Tim Cook, the iPad is getting a lot of push to become the default ‘computer’ over the MacBook. In recent years, Apple has added models to the iPad line across price points, beefed up the software experience, made Apple Pencil compatible, and added a real mouse and keyboard support.

The newer versions of the iPad function more like a traditional computer, a sea change from where Apple’s tablet began a decade ago. The iPad morphing into a MacBook completely might take years — the iPadOS is still not a macOS replacement — but Apple has ambitions to make its tablet more powerful and laptop-like in a decade from now.

The question is what will happen to the MacBook Air? With Mac’s market share at just 6 per cent of the PC market, Cupertino needs to grow the user base and bring more consumers into the Apple ecosystem. The iPad, not the MacBook Air, is Apple’s entry-level computer product. It will be the device that will act as a cross between a tablet and a laptop, even if Apple adds a touchscreen to the MacBook Air in the future.