There was also the market need for the Air, which went beyond people wanting a better netbook. As an engineer, in that era I traveled with a laptop with the requisite performance for some engineering tasks. It was thick. It was heavy. It had about two hours of battery life. It required a power brick that by itself weighed about what the Air did. It had its own bag, with a shoulder strap of course. The first Air wasn't powerful enough for engineering tasks, of course, but it was the right response to what many people needed. Seeing Jobs pull a proper computer out of an envelope was crazy. It didn't have the big power brick either. It did have a huge (for its time, and still bigger than the Magic Keyboard's) trackpad, allowing people to leave the mouse at home -- or to dispense with it altogether. It was good to type on too. Probably most surprisingly for how thin it was, it wasn't flexible and bendy. To the contrary, it was stiffer and more rugged than a standard laptop due to the aluminum body. And, it had a beautiful design language that is still used today. Suddenly, an actual, proper computer could just go in a carry-on or a backpack. A real computer took over the province of the netbook. Sure it was iterative, but the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro today set the standards for mobile computing.
@@RichM3000 Thinkpad X301 existed back then, as a direct Windows competitor to the Macbook Air, except the difference is it didn't overheat and used a Core 2 Duo, like the MBA.
@@theglowcloud2215 I don't think it would have fit in an envelope, but it was more portable than many competing business laptops. The Air was the direction of the future. I switched to a (different) Thinkpad in that era as well and it was certainly an improvement in portability. It was bulletproof for sure and a good system for that era.
Despite these original Airs being pretty much complete garbage, I still had to experiment with them, and was able to upgrade the soldered RAM in both the original and Late-2008 models to 4GB, stealing RAM chips off SO-DIMM modules in the case of the Late-2008. Still not all that much, but provides a HUGE improvement over the stock 2GB. I then of course just had to design and build my own custom SSDs for them... Allowing you to install up to 256GB of solid state storage.
I can attest that the 1,1s are absolute junk. Par contrast the 2,1s, especially the mid-2009, is actually surprisingly useable. I did the soldered memory upgrade as per your idea and realization process from 2GB to 4GB on a top spec 2,13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo L9600 MBA2,1 and managed to get macOS Monterey running on it. As it seems later on, it was the CPU that was bottlenecking the device with utilization% glued at 100% whereas the the system still had 900MB - 1.3GB of free memory left while idle. Sold the device off for $200 to a collector afterwards.
It's just impressive that these old MacBooks are still running - they don't make them like they used to. As someone who's just over 6 months older than the iPhone, I haven't experienced much of this history, but the 2012 MacBook Pro my dad bought when I was 5 years old is still kicking now - and I use it every day.
@@jansix4287 You do realize that 2012 was 11 years ago? The fact that it is still 100% usable is impressive as an 11-year-old machine just shows how much technology has progressed but also shows how devices are getting more and more long-lasting.
@@cidsx my grandpas laptop is a thinkpad thats over 25 years old and it works better than more than half of the macbooks out there, 10 years is the bare minimum for a laptop.
@@heroninja1125 Nonsense. To even try tio claim that a 25-year-old ThinkPad is usable in 2023, that too more than a relatively modern mac? You realize that it's limited to 288 MB of RAM maximum? There are plenty of working vintage macs out there. That doesn't make them "usable." The fact that 11-year-old macs are usable is a testament to how good ALL computers have gotten.
I saw the presentation and it was the coolest thing I had ever seen, so I bought it. Even if I admit it was pretty slow, it was the must fun laptop I have ever had. It was so small and light that I could have it with me everywhere and the mutitouch trackpad mean that for the first time, I didn't have to have a mouse with me. I could use it in bed. I did upgrade to the 2010 version a couple of years later, but I will always have fond memories of my first Macbook Air ❤
I bought my wife a Macbook air in 2011, and it was super prone to overheating. It also never had near enough storage to replace a similar laptop of that era. To that end, I have a current M1 MBA and think it is amazing. Apple does learn sometimes.
I'm on my 1st Gen MacBook Pro and now I'm starting to shop for my 2nd Gen. This one is about 9 years old and it still runs great. The only issues that has me shopping for its replacement are the battery and screen. Besides that, once I went Mac, I can't go back.
Man I remember that iconic manila envelope ad. The Air design was copied by so many other manufacturers. I just upgraded from my old reliable 2013 Air to a 2021 MBP 14. The Air’s stingy 4gb RAM slows it down but it really is immortal.
Really hated the first Air when I tried it. Gosh, they even made 11” version which had horribly small keyboard! The M1 Air I have now, well, that’s a dream machine. Personally, I think Steve’s part of being “visionair” was the reason why many of the first generations were so flawed. He simply was ahead of era, regardless of whether it was possible to made something really usable or not. On the other hand, first iPhone or iPad were very usable. Not by today’s standard, but they did what they promised to do, nothing more, nothing less. Focusing on basic functions but do those really, really well. At those times, other manufactures had 3G, yes, they were able to shoot video, yes, but all those functions were flawed and barely usable.
My first MacBook was a 2010 Air. It was a little expensive compared to other laptops but I wanted in on the Apple world. 13 years later my 15 year old daughter still uses it and it performs absolutely fine for what she needs to do on it.
I remember watching the keynote for the MBA. I do recall eventually getting a 2012 version of the computer. That was my first Mac. Absolutely loved that thing despite its shortcomings. Typing this on an M1 Air.
A correction, Apple was in year three, technically year four of the Intel transition. Since the MacBook Pro Core Duo was launched in January 2006, the Dev Kit was provided in June of 2005.
My first Mac was a 2009 MacBook Air. I bought it second hand for $AU700 and used it for 6 months to see if I liked Macs. I sold it for $AU750 after buying at 13” MacBook Pro. The Air was a great machine but with serious limitations. The internal drive was way too small, and pushing it hard would have the cooling fan screaming in no time. At the time though the competition was also pretty woeful. My corporate Dell laptop from the time would only run for an hour or two at most on batteries and also had screaming fans. Nothing came even close to the portability and usefulness of the MBA. I’d even been using an ASUS Netbook for a while, with its minuscule screen.
Well, for me there's at least one aspect of the old Air that aged like wine: the keyboard. The sensation of typing on these new M1/M2 MacBooks compared to the glorious 2010's era is like typing on a table, not pleasant at all for my taste. I wish I could shove my current 14" M1 Pro into the chassis of my previous 13" 2015 MBP.
Mine still collecting dust. The display is broken (15 years), the performance is so terible slow, magsafe is difficult to align. But it still the thinest and sharpest edge laptop
I loved my MacBook air, I just had to get one when they announced it. Definately was no powerhouse but it was my first laptop which was a nice experience overall. Now finally, years later I got my hand on an M2 MacBook air and boy is this little thing fast.
I upgraded an early 2018 MBA with a 80gb ssd from AliExpress and it is possible to do some very light web browsing using Linux mint, I can play a single TH-cam video and it is usable. By using mint I can even get the wifi drivers to be installed effortlessly, which I can't on other Linux versions. I was planning to play with Linux terminal, because its keyboard is good, but I got a 2012 macbook pro and the MacBook Air is now in storage.
In 2014 I bought the 11" MBA when it went to $899. The same strategy Apple stills uses on the M series MBA's. I'm sure they get a lot of customers that way. I just dipped my toe in Appleland and went back to PC's and Android but I still prefer the class of laptop that the MBA created. I use a ThinkPad Nano which is also thin and light. Apple definitely has a hit on there hands.
I got on the netbook bandwagon when they were a thing. About that time SSDs showed up and I immediately made the upgrade, and of course it made a huge difference in performance. I didn't get into MBAs until recently, when I picked up the M2 MBA.
Still have a 13in late 2010 macbook air which we bought new. It's not used much these days (2gb ram limits the performance), but amazingly the battery still holds a charge, the hinge is a little loose, but it is quite a legendary laptop. The Nvidia 320M graphics were quite strong for the size of the laptop, along with the processor. Showing family members / etc the multi touch trackpad was like magic to them, being able to easily zoom in and out of webpages was a godsend. For basic web browsing the machine is still a joy to use today.. Infact I might rewatch this very video on that mac :P Ironically, it makes for a good windows 7 laptop in bootcamp. The trackpad drivers are a bit iffy but the battery life is better than other old laptops I have.
I got the $1000 SSD upgrade for free because my regular HDD order was delayed. Was so happy as a student. Still an expensive computer though and the overheating issues were real.
SSDs were also extremely new and expensive tech back then. It’s only in the last few years that even external SSD prices have fallen back to earth somewhat.
Between this and the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 that came out at the same time, I'd much rather have the PC. Very similar form factor, but had expandable RAM, more ports and a DVD drive; whilst it only had a 1.2GHz Core2Duo, it didn't have the core disabling problem the MBA had and actually performed BETTER as a result.
I sort of feel like, while it looks like Apple is missing the mark the first time and then nailing it on round two, a lot of that is by design. By this I mean that perhaps Apple put an iPod HDD in the Air with the thought that “if you’ll buy this one, you’ll CERTAINLY buy the next one with an upgraded SSD!” Same thing they did with the first Apple Watch - they ended up, less than a year later, making the EXACT same model much better by adding in a newer processor, and rebranding it “Series 1”. I believe they always had this vision for the future, but what’s more, that the next three Apple Watches were ready in the works at Apple’s engineering labs. However, I completely agree that from a normal user’s point of view, a lot of these did miss the mark. And the hinge issue on the Air is a great example of that!
I bought the original Air (HDD version) back when it launched, and I still own it today. It wasn’t fast, true. It got better when I installed a 3rd party SSD drive in there when those became available for a decent price. But it was so small and light! I never was able to adapt to larger MacBooks after owning that Air.
I remember when the Air debuted. There were PC laptop ads in magazines showing a big, thick laptop being shoved into a Manila envelope and ripping the sides on purpose. Like “Here’s a real computer, sissies!” Hahaha. Those guys.
Yea as an immature early teen I fell for the marketing trap and bought one of those PCs, planning to sell my Air. But I found that the big PC wasn’t even much more powerful. And, I guess that’s when the Mac started becoming more widespread… because all the other kids of my “friend group” laughed at me for having a PC instead of a Mac rather than vice-versa 😆
I had the first Air that came with SSD as standard and I loved it. It was just powerful enough and very much premium enough, even with a cheap TN screen. It took a long time for the Air to get the IPS display it deserved. I kinda wished I had the mini Air when that came out, it was so cute.
Luke I think you might be forgetting the 12" PowerBook G4 which was pretty small and worked pretty well. I still have my employer's and while I haven't fired it up for quite a while she was very attached to it until the AIR came into its own. She did buy the first version of the Air (against my recommendation) and it was all but useless as a work computer. In those days you just didn't buy the first model of anything from Apple. This philosophy came back to bite me in the ass with the M1s but that's another story completely. Anyway as an old, and I do mean old, Mac user from way back I really enjoy you take on Apple and the Macintosh. Keep up the great work young man.
If you were griping that the original MacBook Air had a cut-down processor and then stating Intel Atom, why compare it to a full-blown Macbook Pro. Compare it to an intel Atom netbook.
Kinda curious if there’s a comparison to be made between the original MacBook Air and the more recent MacBook with the ultra low power Intel chips. Terrible at the start, but a stepping stone to something better once tech and production costs made it possible to produce in a lower cost, highly performant way.
My first Mac was an Air 2013 after spending thousand dollars on pc that stopped working after 2 years after getting my Mac I have never looked back I love the Apple ecosystem
I'd say most years the MBA was a hard buy to argue for, and yet it became the big seller most of the time. Where it stuck out the most as a decent option was probably during 2012 as the 13" MBP received its retina upgrade much too late in the year and the MBA just stood out as a device that performed pretty close to the unibody-MBP while even having a higher resolution screen. Also some credit to the Intel HD 4000 being the first IGP that didn't outright stink. And yeah now during the M1 and M2 era they also look pretty good since the abysmal cooling doesn't mean much for ipad-class chips.
Apple isn't afraid to rush in on something innovative. It's questionable how good the 1st gen iPod was, same for the 1st gen iPad and the 1st gen iPhone. I might even argue that Apple tends to get it right on the 2nd or 3rd iteration of something and it's better to wait for that.
Got that first gen MBA when the local university offered a very very deep discount. Had it for a few months and sold it. I made a little bit of profit out of it.
For the time it was revolutionary, but the MacBook Air did not evolve nearly fast enough. What we see today is, however, a gorgeous piece of hardware, be it with some compromises. Fanless is absolutely the way to go, and who tells me they have the CPU throttling should be ashamed of themselves. Stop running stuff on a consumer device that is not build for it, you don't go 250 miles an hour in a ford fiesta now, do you? Exceptions set aside. They would do great to think hard about the 15", remove the notch and make a 1080p 60FPS camera that fits in the housing (thickness be damned). The hardware is impressive, the OS is far from that.
I remember it used the iPod’s hard drive. No doubt a good (mass-purchase) deal for price per unit from Toshiba. There are adapters for iPod to swap the hard drive with SD cards. I wonder if it’s possible make that MacBook Air run from an SD card, like the “1TB iPod Classic.” As a test, I once installed MacOS X on an SD card using a 2011 Mac Mini (using its built-in SD card slot). It started up and ran, a bit slow but not terrible. I kept it around as an emergency boot disk with all my maintenance and recovery utilities installed.
I have the first macbook air with SSD model. It's too old to run recent OS and can't handle the overheating issue even at this point. So I'm just running Batocera on it
I'm on vacation now with my backup lappie, namely my 2015 2.2Ghz MacBook Air running Monterey. Small, light, repairable. Does everything I need it to in the vacation apartment and out and around. And my M2 Air is safe, locked up at home. When I get back, export all the photos from trip from "Photos", data sync to my 2012 MacMini server, resync to the M2.
The vert first MBA was not a very good product but the concept of thin and light really clicked. The idea of laptop can be as thin as a thin book was phenomenal then! Now look at the current macbook air!
It probably was a really nice concept but it was just a little to early for this kind of product. If Apple would have made the first MacBook air just a little less thin an light for the first generation to be able to get a much better cooling for the cpu and a more regular size and performance harddrive than it would be much better and it might even sell really well straight from the first version. The prise of the first version was a little to high and and just to much of a compromise to get that lighter and smaller size. Maybe at this size having some sort of flash storage the only option and also having a lower end and more power efficient processor would make it much better. If the size is so small and the cooling is not that good than a more power efficient processor often will run even faster than a more high end and more power hungry processor. You can see it more recently with the Intel i9 processors that have quite underwhelming performance when the i7 runs more comfortable in the MacBook at that time with the bad thermal management and to thin design for this
I have the late 2020 M1 Base model.. but dang, the MacBook Air has been amazing for me. I came from a 2012 Dell Latitude E6420 that rocked when it came out. By 2021 it had totally died and I had never had a Mac.. December 2021 for $899 the M1 Air was by far the best bet so I took a chance. Two years later I use it, and iPhone, AirPods Pro 2, iPad Pro and AirTags. I'm gully invested.. It's raised my quality of life by a good margin.
Good video. I serviced a lot of these at the Genius Bar back in their day, so I never really pushed them. That being the said, I always appreciated the few 1st gen. Airs with the SSD; that iPod drive made the 10-15 minutes I had to work on them painful. The success of the 1st gen Air was definitely not market share but consumer’s mind share, and maybe even more importantly it was a proof of concept for the unibody enclosure that Apple still utilizes today. The 2nd gen Air was truly brilliant, but the 1.0 was needed to pave the way.
I purchased a refurbished 2013 13" MacBook Air in 2016 and it was an amazing computer that lasted me five years before I was compelled to replace it. The battery was losing its charge rather quickly, and it starting hanging and crashing often. Along with the meagre 4GB or RAM and 128GB hard drive, in 2021 I finally upgraded to a refurbished 2015 MacBook Pro (which I'm still using today) since I was taking a course in React Native and needed more processing power and memory. I'm hoping the rumour of a 15" MacBook Air coming out this summer is true, as it will be my next computer. After having experienced 15" of screen space, I don't know if I could easily got back to the 13" model MacBook Air, though pricing may be the deciding factor. Either model, it's going to be my first new Mac since I purchased a PowerMac G4 back in 1999. I won't buy refurbished this time since I'm avoiding the butterfly keyboards and lack of MagSafe plug.
Yep! These were brutal. I still have 2 of them stored here in my computer drawer. They were fine for light browsing and word processing, but that’s it. Luckily they are so thin they don’t take up much space in my storage 😊
I recently bought a defective joblot of MacBooks and there was one of the first models of MacBook Air included. Late 2008 with the funny display connector they only used for the first 3 months. The screen data cable connector is broken, the hard drive missing and one key was loose. I am looking forward to fixing it and trying it with an old macOS. Just...for the memes.
A small correction - thin and light notebooks existed at that time and were very popular with businessman that needed thin, light, portable laptop with good battery to use a typewriter, so very weak CPUs were used. Look at sony VAIO at that time as an example, but they were VERY pricy, I mean that AIR was 1/2 the price even for 1700$. While netbooks were a cheap solution for students, that had many flaws. Hence, the name - net and book, meaning, their only purpose was to browse the web. Later they transformed to what we know and love - chromebooks. But AIR was aiming at that demographic that needed ultra portable laptops, so it was not competing with MBP for 200$ difference - it was an alternative to BMP. Almost all of my colleagues at work, that fit that demographic, still have the G1 and G2 AIRs at home, working as a cheap laptop for their kids, albeit, all of them had HDDs replaced for SSDs at some point
I bought the original MBA with 64gb ssd in 2009 from Apple refurbished store. It’s display was buggy and gave me a lot of problems. Scared me from buying from Apple refurbished ever again
Apple refurbished has gotten a lot better since then trust me. Their prices have not gotten better but the quality of the refurbished product has gotten better but it is shitty to see that they have a five year old Mac Pro that sells for over $6000 and yet Apple would give you zero dollars in trading value on that same exact machine. That’s a true fact it’s been tested. They will offer to recycle it for you and that is all.
Don’t know if you’ll get to it, but now that I think on it (I was a Genius at the time), the first MacBook Air with an SSD cost about what the mixed-reality headset is supposedly going to cost (adjusted for inflation) and not many people bought them.
I had two 13" MBAs bought in 2011. They both lasted until 2021. And they were used constantly. They were fast enough for basic stuff (for Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro I used a 2015 iMac i9 back then, which still seems to work pretty well). The cutoff for me is 5 years-if it lasts 5 years or better, which a 2001 iBook and two 2006 PowerBook G4's easily did, that's decent. 10 years is outstanding. Compare that to a MB bought in 2016, which died an ignoble death in 2020 after the audio failed and eventually the SINGLE port failed (that thing screamed weird death rattle sounds at me for months leading up to that) and had a keyboard that was like typing on a block of wood which had to be replaced after less than a year. 4 years? That, to me, is an effing LEMON! It had a gorgeous screen, but it really was a POS compared to the workhorse MBA which was 5 years older at the time. Of course all of them were slooooooowwww compared to Apple Silicon circa 2022. I could walk the dog and make a sandwich in the time it took to compile a 200,000-word manuscript in Scrivener into an epub, which on my M1 MBP takes about 12 seconds. I hated the wedge. Never again. When I would carry it, it felt flimsy, like carrying the scythe from 'The Pit and The Pendulum', sharpened blade side down, or a ripsaw, digging into my hand. The old PowerBooks felt solid. Substantial. They had presence. The MBA felt excruciatingly uncomfortable when carrying it, and I'd like to dig up Jony Ive's corpse and beat him over the head with his own shinbone (apologies to Mark Twain). Why on God's green earth did anyone think 'thin' (at the expense of everything else) was in any way an asset? That still boggles my mind. I also was not fond of those extremely ginormously thick bezels, which were blindingly bright. But, what the hey-it was 2011 (except the bezels on the 2006 PB were one-quarter that wide). So for me, the MBA was a love-hate relationship.
I would not necessarily agree that it was in anyway a fail. Yes, it had its flaws but what laptop was perfect? Actually i think MacBook Air should be the most successful MacBook from the lineup because it was affordable. This i consider it to be the entry-level Macbook for users that in the end chose Macbook Pros, iMac, etc, so basically the Apple Eco-system. I remember back in the days when owning a laptop was like owning a truck in the idillic italian countryside. Chunky, bulky and heavy while the Macbook was light, thin and slick design despite its performance. So, all in all, i think Air saved Apple from having only Pro and high end models and a limited range of customers. This is my opinion, anyway.
I had this back in 08, the one with the PATA HDD…. As a computer it was an absolute shitshow, but pulling it out on the tube or in the coffee shop felt completely badass. I sold a polycarbonate MacBook to get it, which functionally was a bad move…. I definitely fell for the hype haha
Hello Luke, 'was wondering if you could help me...I'm using a late 2011 unibody running Catalina via patcher...all's well except I can't give chrome permission to use the mic and camera, there's just no option to do that...maybe you've got a fix for this...hope you can help me...love your videos...thanks...
I still maintain all these years later that the ThinkPad x301 achieved what the air was aiming to be. Or at least is the real progenitor to Ultrabooks It's easy to make something smaller and more light weight if you just remove all the ports and features The x301 was a very similar size and weight, while managing to have multiple USB ports, video out, and an optical drive Between the two it's pretty obvious which was a feat of engineering and which was trying to cash in on a trend
A late 2008 Unibody MacBook would have been a cheaper buy for $1,599 for the 2.4 GHz with backlit keyboard over the MBA at $200 more. Better specs, more RAM, more storage.
I do not agree with your analysis. The original MacBook Air was successful, otherwise, Apple would have not kept it on the market. It was aimed at journalist and web surfing at the time, not 3D rendering nor Photoshop. If you went to schools of journalists or writers, everyone was using a MacBook Air. The hard drive was slow, but it was the only solution available at the time and the software was not too demanding (for the intended use). It is unfair to test it against a MacBook Pro.
I did a Cinebench R20 test on my 11” Core 2 Duo MacBook Air. I got 43 points! It also slows down to be completely unusable. Laggy as hell too, even on OS X Lion (what it launched with). I think it’s got a serious hardware issue to be honest. It runs macOS High Sierra now but I never use it anymore.
Lol yeah it’s not gonna be too good with cinebench! You can actually upgrade to the (almost) latest software tho - there’s a thing called Opencore Legacy which lets you upgrade to at least Monterey (idk about Ventura yet). For me at least that made this worth it.
Sad thing is because Apple decided to solder the ram (2Gb) onto the MB (so you can't upgrade ram) these machine would have been sufficient to run web, office based programs in 2023, with 8Gb but most will end up part recycled & part into a landfill
8:08 I think chugging in this context is a good thing. It is like a train running smoothly, or it seems that is how most people use it. I think you meant to say choking maybe?
Yeah that first gen was pretty trash but I remember when they came out with the second gen it was everything I wanted out of a laptop. Thin. Light. Excellent battery life. Woke from sleep quicker than anything else at the time. It’s like someone made a list of everything I hated about laptops and solved all of them. This was the product that got me to stop hating apple and later convert several other PC friends. We all still have windows desktops for gaming but we also all use MacBooks still to this day. Because for everything we want to do when we can’t be at our desktops MacBooks do perfectly. And now thanks to apple silicon I’m not sure what the point of a windows computer is.
I still use a 2012 Macbook Air 8gb. Upgraded the SSD to 1TB (overkill but thought it was funny). It's definitely underpowered and there are times my phone is faster for certain tasks but for basic office work and even browser based tasks (Google docs, Notion, etc) it still works fine! If this eventually dies I'll probably go for the M1/M2 air though!
While Steve was getting out his sheet of paper, others were already using notebooks that weren't as chic but had much better durability, but also fit into this category. e.g. the IBM X60. In 2008 there was already a successor, the X200. The second one can be upgraded with SSD and 8GB RAM and even runs windows 10 on it, please do the same with the Airbook. Unfortunately, this stupid Apple concept with soldered components has prevailed and we have planned obsolescence. Thanks Apple.
IMO the MBA all were pretty bad until they added the M1 to that previous gen form factor. They pretty much fixed everything else including a horrible screen except for performance/battery life with that form factor, and then the M1 took it to the next level with the performance and battery life.
I dont know i mean where was the state of computing in 2008? How high performance do you want i mean it was literally still the 2000s i wouldnt expect that to compete with 2010s tech
![ILLSLICK - WINTER IS COMING [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dwTMeM1zIhQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Gotta admit the PR stun of pulling it out of the envelop back then was hard to beat and insane to see.
There was also the market need for the Air, which went beyond people wanting a better netbook. As an engineer, in that era I traveled with a laptop with the requisite performance for some engineering tasks. It was thick. It was heavy. It had about two hours of battery life. It required a power brick that by itself weighed about what the Air did. It had its own bag, with a shoulder strap of course.
The first Air wasn't powerful enough for engineering tasks, of course, but it was the right response to what many people needed. Seeing Jobs pull a proper computer out of an envelope was crazy. It didn't have the big power brick either. It did have a huge (for its time, and still bigger than the Magic Keyboard's) trackpad, allowing people to leave the mouse at home -- or to dispense with it altogether. It was good to type on too. Probably most surprisingly for how thin it was, it wasn't flexible and bendy. To the contrary, it was stiffer and more rugged than a standard laptop due to the aluminum body. And, it had a beautiful design language that is still used today.
Suddenly, an actual, proper computer could just go in a carry-on or a backpack. A real computer took over the province of the netbook. Sure it was iterative, but the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro today set the standards for mobile computing.
@@RichM3000 Thinkpad X301 existed back then, as a direct Windows competitor to the Macbook Air, except the difference is it didn't overheat and used a Core 2 Duo, like the MBA.
@@theglowcloud2215 I don't think it would have fit in an envelope, but it was more portable than many competing business laptops. The Air was the direction of the future.
I switched to a (different) Thinkpad in that era as well and it was certainly an improvement in portability. It was bulletproof for sure and a good system for that era.
Despite these original Airs being pretty much complete garbage, I still had to experiment with them, and was able to upgrade the soldered RAM in both the original and Late-2008 models to 4GB, stealing RAM chips off SO-DIMM modules in the case of the Late-2008. Still not all that much, but provides a HUGE improvement over the stock 2GB. I then of course just had to design and build my own custom SSDs for them... Allowing you to install up to 256GB of solid state storage.
heyy dosdude! love your projects man ❤
I can attest that the 1,1s are absolute junk. Par contrast the 2,1s, especially the mid-2009, is actually surprisingly useable. I did the soldered memory upgrade as per your idea and realization process from 2GB to 4GB on a top spec 2,13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo L9600 MBA2,1 and managed to get macOS Monterey running on it. As it seems later on, it was the CPU that was bottlenecking the device with utilization% glued at 100% whereas the the system still had 900MB - 1.3GB of free memory left while idle. Sold the device off for $200 to a collector afterwards.
You're a mad man. Apple should hire you to preemptively fix their f*** ups
why tho if the X3100 limits your system up to 10.8
This is awesome. I'm trying to find an i7 to solder it on my mac mini 2018 to do a project on it.
It's just impressive that these old MacBooks are still running - they don't make them like they used to. As someone who's just over 6 months older than the iPhone, I haven't experienced much of this history, but the 2012 MacBook Pro my dad bought when I was 5 years old is still kicking now - and I use it every day.
2012 is not a very old machine.
@@jansix4287 You do realize that 2012 was 11 years ago? The fact that it is still 100% usable is impressive as an 11-year-old machine just shows how much technology has progressed but also shows how devices are getting more and more long-lasting.
@@cidsx 10 years is normal. 15 years is exceptional.
@@cidsx my grandpas laptop is a thinkpad thats over 25 years old and it works better than more than half of the macbooks out there, 10 years is the bare minimum for a laptop.
@@heroninja1125 Nonsense. To even try tio claim that a 25-year-old ThinkPad is usable in 2023, that too more than a relatively modern mac? You realize that it's limited to 288 MB of RAM maximum?
There are plenty of working vintage macs out there. That doesn't make them "usable." The fact that 11-year-old macs are usable is a testament to how good ALL computers have gotten.
I saw the presentation and it was the coolest thing I had ever seen, so I bought it. Even if I admit it was pretty slow, it was the must fun laptop I have ever had. It was so small and light that I could have it with me everywhere and the mutitouch trackpad mean that for the first time, I didn't have to have a mouse with me. I could use it in bed. I did upgrade to the 2010 version a couple of years later, but I will always have fond memories of my first Macbook Air ❤
My 2013 Air was amazing. Used it daily until 2023 when I finally upgraded to an M2, but now my parents are using my old Air still.
using base 2014 model to this day, only once changed the battery. It's just amazing that this thing still works fine
My father is still using 2013 Air with upgraded storage. Only the battery has become weak and performance is adequate for for normal web browsing.
I bought my wife a Macbook air in 2011, and it was super prone to overheating. It also never had near enough storage to replace a similar laptop of that era.
To that end, I have a current M1 MBA and think it is amazing. Apple does learn sometimes.
I'm on my 1st Gen MacBook Pro and now I'm starting to shop for my 2nd Gen. This one is about 9 years old and it still runs great. The only issues that has me shopping for its replacement are the battery and screen. Besides that, once I went Mac, I can't go back.
Update! There was a sale on Amazon and I pulled the trigger. I'm typing this on my now 2nd Gen MacBook Pro M2 Max 14". Buying now saved 500€.
Man I remember that iconic manila envelope ad. The Air design was copied by so many other manufacturers. I just upgraded from my old reliable 2013 Air to a 2021 MBP 14. The Air’s stingy 4gb RAM slows it down but it really is immortal.
Really hated the first Air when I tried it. Gosh, they even made 11” version which had horribly small keyboard!
The M1 Air I have now, well, that’s a dream machine. Personally, I think Steve’s part of being “visionair” was the reason why many of the first generations were so flawed. He simply was ahead of era, regardless of whether it was possible to made something really usable or not.
On the other hand, first iPhone or iPad were very usable. Not by today’s standard, but they did what they promised to do, nothing more, nothing less. Focusing on basic functions but do those really, really well. At those times, other manufactures had 3G, yes, they were able to shoot video, yes, but all those functions were flawed and barely usable.
My first MacBook was a 2010 Air. It was a little expensive compared to other laptops but I wanted in on the Apple world. 13 years later my 15 year old daughter still uses it and it performs absolutely fine for what she needs to do on it.
I remember watching the keynote for the MBA. I do recall eventually getting a 2012 version of the computer. That was my first Mac. Absolutely loved that thing despite its shortcomings. Typing this on an M1 Air.
A correction, Apple was in year three, technically year four of the Intel transition. Since the MacBook Pro Core Duo was launched in January 2006, the Dev Kit was provided in June of 2005.
I just sold a 11" MBA for $250, There's still an odd demand for small laptops.
My first Mac was a 2009 MacBook Air. I bought it second hand for $AU700 and used it for 6 months to see if I liked Macs. I sold it for $AU750 after buying at 13” MacBook Pro.
The Air was a great machine but with serious limitations. The internal drive was way too small, and pushing it hard would have the cooling fan screaming in no time.
At the time though the competition was also pretty woeful. My corporate Dell laptop from the time would only run for an hour or two at most on batteries and also had screaming fans. Nothing came even close to the portability and usefulness of the MBA. I’d even been using an ASUS Netbook for a while, with its minuscule screen.
Even in late 2015 I would say the Macbook Air was still unrivaled to some degree. Windows ultra books only caught up a few years later.
Well, for me there's at least one aspect of the old Air that aged like wine: the keyboard. The sensation of typing on these new M1/M2 MacBooks compared to the glorious 2010's era is like typing on a table, not pleasant at all for my taste. I wish I could shove my current 14" M1 Pro into the chassis of my previous 13" 2015 MBP.
Mine still collecting dust. The display is broken (15 years), the performance is so terible slow, magsafe is difficult to align. But it still the thinest and sharpest edge laptop
I loved my MacBook air, I just had to get one when they announced it. Definately was no powerhouse but it was my first laptop which was a nice experience overall.
Now finally, years later I got my hand on an M2 MacBook air and boy is this little thing fast.
I upgraded an early 2018 MBA with a 80gb ssd from AliExpress and it is possible to do some very light web browsing using Linux mint, I can play a single TH-cam video and it is usable. By using mint I can even get the wifi drivers to be installed effortlessly, which I can't on other Linux versions. I was planning to play with Linux terminal, because its keyboard is good, but I got a 2012 macbook pro and the MacBook Air is now in storage.
In 2014 I bought the 11" MBA when it went to $899. The same strategy Apple stills uses on the M series MBA's. I'm sure they get a lot of customers that way. I just dipped my toe in Appleland and went back to PC's and Android but I still prefer the class of laptop that the MBA created. I use a ThinkPad Nano which is also thin and light. Apple definitely has a hit on there hands.
I got on the netbook bandwagon when they were a thing. About that time SSDs showed up and I immediately made the upgrade, and of course it made a huge difference in performance. I didn't get into MBAs until recently, when I picked up the M2 MBA.
Still have a 13in late 2010 macbook air which we bought new. It's not used much these days (2gb ram limits the performance), but amazingly the battery still holds a charge, the hinge is a little loose, but it is quite a legendary laptop. The Nvidia 320M graphics were quite strong for the size of the laptop, along with the processor.
Showing family members / etc the multi touch trackpad was like magic to them, being able to easily zoom in and out of webpages was a godsend.
For basic web browsing the machine is still a joy to use today.. Infact I might rewatch this very video on that mac :P
Ironically, it makes for a good windows 7 laptop in bootcamp. The trackpad drivers are a bit iffy but the battery life is better than other old laptops I have.
I got the $1000 SSD upgrade for free because my regular HDD order was delayed. Was so happy as a student. Still an expensive computer though and the overheating issues were real.
A thousand dollars for an SSD shouldn't be surprising, considering that this IS the company that charges $999 for a monitor stand.
SSDs were also extremely new and expensive tech back then. It’s only in the last few years that even external SSD prices have fallen back to earth somewhat.
Between this and the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 that came out at the same time, I'd much rather have the PC. Very similar form factor, but had expandable RAM, more ports and a DVD drive; whilst it only had a 1.2GHz Core2Duo, it didn't have the core disabling problem the MBA had and actually performed BETTER as a result.
I sort of feel like, while it looks like Apple is missing the mark the first time and then nailing it on round two, a lot of that is by design. By this I mean that perhaps Apple put an iPod HDD in the Air with the thought that “if you’ll buy this one, you’ll CERTAINLY buy the next one with an upgraded SSD!” Same thing they did with the first Apple Watch - they ended up, less than a year later, making the EXACT same model much better by adding in a newer processor, and rebranding it “Series 1”. I believe they always had this vision for the future, but what’s more, that the next three Apple Watches were ready in the works at Apple’s engineering labs.
However, I completely agree that from a normal user’s point of view, a lot of these did miss the mark. And the hinge issue on the Air is a great example of that!
I bought the original Air (HDD version) back when it launched, and I still own it today. It wasn’t fast, true. It got better when I installed a 3rd party SSD drive in there when those became available for a decent price. But it was so small and light! I never was able to adapt to larger MacBooks after owning that Air.
I remember when the Air debuted. There were PC laptop ads in magazines showing a big, thick laptop being shoved into a Manila envelope and ripping the sides on purpose. Like “Here’s a real computer, sissies!” Hahaha. Those guys.
Yea as an immature early teen I fell for the marketing trap and bought one of those PCs, planning to sell my Air. But I found that the big PC wasn’t even much more powerful. And, I guess that’s when the Mac started becoming more widespread… because all the other kids of my “friend group” laughed at me for having a PC instead of a Mac rather than vice-versa 😆
I had the first Air that came with SSD as standard and I loved it. It was just powerful enough and very much premium enough, even with a cheap TN screen. It took a long time for the Air to get the IPS display it deserved. I kinda wished I had the mini Air when that came out, it was so cute.
I think the current M2 Airs should have been branded ‘MacBook’.
Oh man, I remember wanting it so bad after seeing the envelope commercial
Luke I think you might be forgetting the 12" PowerBook G4 which was pretty small and worked pretty well. I still have my employer's and while I haven't fired it up for quite a while she was very attached to it until the AIR came into its own. She did buy the first version of the Air (against my recommendation) and it was all but useless as a work computer. In those days you just didn't buy the first model of anything from Apple. This philosophy came back to bite me in the ass with the M1s but that's another story completely. Anyway as an old, and I do mean old, Mac user from way back I really enjoy you take on Apple and the Macintosh. Keep up the great work young man.
I still use my MacBook Air from 2014 for University. And I can say It is the best machine I‘ve could have gotten!
My sister isstill using my 2011 MBA. Its amazing how lasting the machine is. I only needed to replace its battery some years ago
@@saf6996 I did the same, I replaced also my battery
If you were griping that the original MacBook Air had a cut-down processor and then stating Intel Atom, why compare it to a full-blown Macbook Pro. Compare it to an intel Atom netbook.
Kinda curious if there’s a comparison to be made between the original MacBook Air and the more recent MacBook with the ultra low power Intel chips. Terrible at the start, but a stepping stone to something better once tech and production costs made it possible to produce in a lower cost, highly performant way.
My first Mac was an Air 2013 after spending thousand dollars on pc that stopped working after 2 years after getting my Mac I have never looked back I love the Apple ecosystem
How would you compare this MacBook Air with the other faulty 12” MacBook (Intel Core M) from 2015?
another hit, i personally just love learning about the history of MACS and their trial and error to improve to the classic hits we have today.
11” MBA had a unique compact size. I haven’t looked at them since they dropped the 11. Bring it back with an m2 and I’ll get in line.
I legit don’t remember the MagSafe being on the underside 😂
I'd say most years the MBA was a hard buy to argue for, and yet it became the big seller most of the time.
Where it stuck out the most as a decent option was probably during 2012 as the 13" MBP received its retina upgrade much too late in the year and the MBA just stood out as a device that performed pretty close to the unibody-MBP while even having a higher resolution screen. Also some credit to the Intel HD 4000 being the first IGP that didn't outright stink.
And yeah now during the M1 and M2 era they also look pretty good since the abysmal cooling doesn't mean much for ipad-class chips.
Apple isn't afraid to rush in on something innovative. It's questionable how good the 1st gen iPod was, same for the 1st gen iPad and the 1st gen iPhone. I might even argue that Apple tends to get it right on the 2nd or 3rd iteration of something and it's better to wait for that.
Got that first gen MBA when the local university offered a very very deep discount. Had it for a few months and sold it. I made a little bit of profit out of it.
For the time it was revolutionary, but the MacBook Air did not evolve nearly fast enough. What we see today is, however, a gorgeous piece of hardware, be it with some compromises. Fanless is absolutely the way to go, and who tells me they have the CPU throttling should be ashamed of themselves. Stop running stuff on a consumer device that is not build for it, you don't go 250 miles an hour in a ford fiesta now, do you? Exceptions set aside. They would do great to think hard about the 15", remove the notch and make a 1080p 60FPS camera that fits in the housing (thickness be damned). The hardware is impressive, the OS is far from that.
I remember it used the iPod’s hard drive. No doubt a good (mass-purchase) deal for price per unit from Toshiba. There are adapters for iPod to swap the hard drive with SD cards. I wonder if it’s possible make that MacBook Air run from an SD card, like the “1TB iPod Classic.” As a test, I once installed MacOS X on an SD card using a 2011 Mac Mini (using its built-in SD card slot). It started up and ran, a bit slow but not terrible. I kept it around as an emergency boot disk with all my maintenance and recovery utilities installed.
I have the first macbook air with SSD model. It's too old to run recent OS and can't handle the overheating issue even at this point. So I'm just running Batocera on it
i never used the first airbook, the 2011 model i bought I thought was fantastic, really loved it.
I'm on vacation now with my backup lappie, namely my 2015 2.2Ghz MacBook Air running Monterey. Small, light, repairable. Does everything I need it to in the vacation apartment and out and around. And my M2 Air is safe, locked up at home. When I get back, export all the photos from trip from "Photos", data sync to my 2012 MacMini server, resync to the M2.
What they didn't realize is that the core2 duo took a huge hit from not having cooling.
The vert first MBA was not a very good product but the concept of thin and light really clicked. The idea of laptop can be as thin as a thin book was phenomenal then! Now look at the current macbook air!
When you described the problems, it sounded like you were describing my 2018 macboom retina. Overhears, flimsy hinge, new ports
It's crazy to think the MacBook Air used to start at $1,799 compared to $999 now. 8:36
The MacBook Air is the first tech product I remember being hyped about. That envelope ad probably had something to do with it lol
I love my m1 air. Sad to see that style of case go away 😢
It probably was a really nice concept but it was just a little to early for this kind of product. If Apple would have made the first MacBook air just a little less thin an light for the first generation to be able to get a much better cooling for the cpu and a more regular size and performance harddrive than it would be much better and it might even sell really well straight from the first version. The prise of the first version was a little to high and and just to much of a compromise to get that lighter and smaller size. Maybe at this size having some sort of flash storage the only option and also having a lower end and more power efficient processor would make it much better. If the size is so small and the cooling is not that good than a more power efficient processor often will run even faster than a more high end and more power hungry processor. You can see it more recently with the Intel i9 processors that have quite underwhelming performance when the i7 runs more comfortable in the MacBook at that time with the bad thermal management and to thin design for this
$1000 didn't seem that outrageous for an SSD in 2008. $1000 for a monitor stand, on the other hand, that's ludicrous, but some dopes will buy it.
I have the late 2020 M1 Base model.. but dang, the MacBook Air has been amazing for me. I came from a 2012 Dell Latitude E6420 that rocked when it came out. By 2021 it had totally died and I had never had a Mac.. December 2021 for $899 the M1 Air was by far the best bet so I took a chance.
Two years later I use it, and iPhone, AirPods Pro 2, iPad Pro and AirTags. I'm gully invested.. It's raised my quality of life by a good margin.
Good video. I serviced a lot of these at the Genius Bar back in their day, so I never really pushed them. That being the said, I always appreciated the few 1st gen. Airs with the SSD; that iPod drive made the 10-15 minutes I had to work on them painful. The success of the 1st gen Air was definitely not market share but consumer’s mind share, and maybe even more importantly it was a proof of concept for the unibody enclosure that Apple still utilizes today. The 2nd gen Air was truly brilliant, but the 1.0 was needed to pave the way.
I had a 2009 MBA that was slow and hot. Thankfully it was stolen and I got a 2011 MBA, which I still have and use!
"Thankfully it was stolen" 😭
I purchased a refurbished 2013 13" MacBook Air in 2016 and it was an amazing computer that lasted me five years before I was compelled to replace it. The battery was losing its charge rather quickly, and it starting hanging and crashing often. Along with the meagre 4GB or RAM and 128GB hard drive, in 2021 I finally upgraded to a refurbished 2015 MacBook Pro (which I'm still using today) since I was taking a course in React Native and needed more processing power and memory. I'm hoping the rumour of a 15" MacBook Air coming out this summer is true, as it will be my next computer. After having experienced 15" of screen space, I don't know if I could easily got back to the 13" model MacBook Air, though pricing may be the deciding factor. Either model, it's going to be my first new Mac since I purchased a PowerMac G4 back in 1999. I won't buy refurbished this time since I'm avoiding the butterfly keyboards and lack of MagSafe plug.
I have that original MBA, upgraded the 80gb HDD to a whopping 120gb drive… hard to find those… still runs…
Yep! These were brutal. I still have 2 of them stored here in my computer drawer. They were fine for light browsing and word processing, but that’s it. Luckily they are so thin they don’t take up much space in my storage 😊
I recently bought a defective joblot of MacBooks and there was one of the first models of MacBook Air included. Late 2008 with the funny display connector they only used for the first 3 months. The screen data cable connector is broken, the hard drive missing and one key was loose.
I am looking forward to fixing it and trying it with an old macOS.
Just...for the memes.
A small correction - thin and light notebooks existed at that time and were very popular with businessman that needed thin, light, portable laptop with good battery to use a typewriter, so very weak CPUs were used. Look at sony VAIO at that time as an example, but they were VERY pricy, I mean that AIR was 1/2 the price even for 1700$. While netbooks were a cheap solution for students, that had many flaws. Hence, the name - net and book, meaning, their only purpose was to browse the web. Later they transformed to what we know and love - chromebooks. But AIR was aiming at that demographic that needed ultra portable laptops, so it was not competing with MBP for 200$ difference - it was an alternative to BMP. Almost all of my colleagues at work, that fit that demographic, still have the G1 and G2 AIRs at home, working as a cheap laptop for their kids, albeit, all of them had HDDs replaced for SSDs at some point
I bought the original MBA with 64gb ssd in 2009 from Apple refurbished store. It’s display was buggy and gave me a lot of problems. Scared me from buying from Apple refurbished ever again
Apple refurbished has gotten a lot better since then trust me. Their prices have not gotten better but the quality of the refurbished product has gotten better but it is shitty to see that they have a five year old Mac Pro that sells for over $6000 and yet Apple would give you zero dollars in trading value on that same exact machine. That’s a true fact it’s been tested. They will offer to recycle it for you and that is all.
But what about a basic M1 12” retina MacBook?
I am looking forward for it!!
Don’t know if you’ll get to it, but now that I think on it (I was a Genius at the time), the first MacBook Air with an SSD cost about what the mixed-reality headset is supposedly going to cost (adjusted for inflation) and not many people bought them.
My second gen Air (Broadwell i5) is still trucking along for basic web browsing and MS Office.
I had two 13" MBAs bought in 2011. They both lasted until 2021. And they were used constantly. They were fast enough for basic stuff (for Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro I used a 2015 iMac i9 back then, which still seems to work pretty well). The cutoff for me is 5 years-if it lasts 5 years or better, which a 2001 iBook and two 2006 PowerBook G4's easily did, that's decent. 10 years is outstanding.
Compare that to a MB bought in 2016, which died an ignoble death in 2020 after the audio failed and eventually the SINGLE port failed (that thing screamed weird death rattle sounds at me for months leading up to that) and had a keyboard that was like typing on a block of wood which had to be replaced after less than a year. 4 years? That, to me, is an effing LEMON! It had a gorgeous screen, but it really was a POS compared to the workhorse MBA which was 5 years older at the time.
Of course all of them were slooooooowwww compared to Apple Silicon circa 2022. I could walk the dog and make a sandwich in the time it took to compile a 200,000-word manuscript in Scrivener into an epub, which on my M1 MBP takes about 12 seconds.
I hated the wedge. Never again. When I would carry it, it felt flimsy, like carrying the scythe from 'The Pit and The Pendulum', sharpened blade side down, or a ripsaw, digging into my hand. The old PowerBooks felt solid. Substantial. They had presence. The MBA felt excruciatingly uncomfortable when carrying it, and I'd like to dig up Jony Ive's corpse and beat him over the head with his own shinbone (apologies to Mark Twain).
Why on God's green earth did anyone think 'thin' (at the expense of everything else) was in any way an asset? That still boggles my mind.
I also was not fond of those extremely ginormously thick bezels, which were blindingly bright. But, what the hey-it was 2011 (except the bezels on the 2006 PB were one-quarter that wide). So for me, the MBA was a love-hate relationship.
I would not necessarily agree that it was in anyway a fail. Yes, it had its flaws but what laptop was perfect?
Actually i think MacBook Air should be the most successful MacBook from the lineup because it was affordable. This i consider it to be the entry-level Macbook for users that in the end chose Macbook Pros, iMac, etc, so basically the Apple Eco-system. I remember back in the days when owning a laptop was like owning a truck in the idillic italian countryside. Chunky, bulky and heavy while the Macbook was light, thin and slick design despite its performance. So, all in all, i think Air saved Apple from having only Pro and high end models and a limited range of customers. This is my opinion, anyway.
I had this back in 08, the one with the PATA HDD…. As a computer it was an absolute shitshow, but pulling it out on the tube or in the coffee shop felt completely badass. I sold a polycarbonate MacBook to get it, which functionally was a bad move…. I definitely fell for the hype haha
Would love to see you send that thing to Dosdude1 and have him upgrade the ssd and memory and then retest it!
Hello Luke, 'was wondering if you could help me...I'm using a late 2011 unibody running Catalina via patcher...all's well except I can't give chrome permission to use the mic and camera, there's just no option to do that...maybe you've got a fix for this...hope you can help me...love your videos...thanks...
Pretty amazing that the design language of the 2008 Air is basically the same as the M1 Air, still sold by Apple in 2023 and still looking great.
I still maintain all these years later that the ThinkPad x301 achieved what the air was aiming to be. Or at least is the real progenitor to Ultrabooks
It's easy to make something smaller and more light weight if you just remove all the ports and features
The x301 was a very similar size and weight, while managing to have multiple USB ports, video out, and an optical drive
Between the two it's pretty obvious which was a feat of engineering and which was trying to cash in on a trend
Great points!
A late 2008 Unibody MacBook would have been a cheaper buy for $1,599 for the 2.4 GHz with backlit keyboard over the MBA at $200 more.
Better specs, more RAM, more storage.
I do not agree with your analysis. The original MacBook Air was successful, otherwise, Apple would have not kept it on the market. It was aimed at journalist and web surfing at the time, not 3D rendering nor Photoshop. If you went to schools of journalists or writers, everyone was using a MacBook Air. The hard drive was slow, but it was the only solution available at the time and the software was not too demanding (for the intended use). It is unfair to test it against a MacBook Pro.
I did a Cinebench R20 test on my 11” Core 2 Duo MacBook Air. I got 43 points!
It also slows down to be completely unusable. Laggy as hell too, even on OS X Lion (what it launched with). I think it’s got a serious hardware issue to be honest. It runs macOS High Sierra now but I never use it anymore.
Lol yeah it’s not gonna be too good with cinebench! You can actually upgrade to the (almost) latest software tho - there’s a thing called Opencore Legacy which lets you upgrade to at least Monterey (idk about Ventura yet). For me at least that made this worth it.
@@Epicgamer_Mac No point really. I’ve got a 2014 Mac Mini that runs Monterey and operates way better as my MacBook Air doesn’t work properly.
@@lukeweeks3470 Fair enough. Plus newer, unsupported software could slow the Air down more.
Sad thing is because Apple decided to solder the ram (2Gb) onto the MB (so you can't upgrade ram) these machine would have been sufficient to run web, office based programs in 2023, with 8Gb but most will end up part recycled & part into a landfill
8:08 I think chugging in this context is a good thing. It is like a train running smoothly, or it seems that is how most people use it. I think you meant to say choking maybe?
I started using my wife's old 2017 dual core i 5 MacBook air at work. I am so surprised by how snappy and responsive it is in 2023 😅
I still cant believe they put a TN panel in it…
Yeah that first gen was pretty trash but I remember when they came out with the second gen it was everything I wanted out of a laptop. Thin. Light. Excellent battery life. Woke from sleep quicker than anything else at the time. It’s like someone made a list of everything I hated about laptops and solved all of them. This was the product that got me to stop hating apple and later convert several other PC friends. We all still have windows desktops for gaming but we also all use MacBooks still to this day. Because for everything we want to do when we can’t be at our desktops MacBooks do perfectly.
And now thanks to apple silicon I’m not sure what the point of a windows computer is.
... but it was SOOOO PRETTY and small!!! Always wanted one but never had a use for it. lol
Should i buy a 2015 one? I have a little under 200 and want a good Mac
Netbooks were the future, they were just ahead of their time. I wish OEMs would start making subnotebooks again with modern hardware.
I had one and it didn’t suck and it had the SSD drive in it and it was a great surf machine. The hinges broke on them that suck though!!!
I still use a 2012 Macbook Air 8gb. Upgraded the SSD to 1TB (overkill but thought it was funny). It's definitely underpowered and there are times my phone is faster for certain tasks but for basic office work and even browser based tasks (Google docs, Notion, etc) it still works fine! If this eventually dies I'll probably go for the M1/M2 air though!
I was feeling deja vu watching this video, and after checking: yep, almost the same as your 2021 video about 2008 Air, come on... Love your vids still
While Steve was getting out his sheet of paper, others were already using notebooks that weren't as chic but had much better durability, but also fit into this category. e.g. the IBM X60. In 2008 there was already a successor, the X200. The second one can be upgraded with SSD and 8GB RAM and even runs windows 10 on it, please do the same with the Airbook. Unfortunately, this stupid Apple concept with soldered components has prevailed and we have planned obsolescence. Thanks Apple.
Hi please could you please try to fit M1 MacBook Air into MacBook Pro late 2013 model and use its display ??
You know something? You're right. May as well get something that's smaller, and fits my budget more. NO WAY AM I SPENDING $2,000 on a new Mac.
Did you get press invite to WWDC Luke? Congrats!
What about the 11" macbook air, that is a rare one too.
IMO the MBA all were pretty bad until they added the M1 to that previous gen form factor. They pretty much fixed everything else including a horrible screen except for performance/battery life with that form factor, and then the M1 took it to the next level with the performance and battery life.
My experience: never buy a first generation Apple product! Just be patient and buy the debugged version. 😄
What about the Mac Studio?
Do you consider the 24" M1 iMac a first generation product? Because it's amazing!
@@jansix4287 but don’t buy it because it is due for an m2 or m3 upgrade
@@justin6581 Already bought it, great price!
I dont know i mean where was the state of computing in 2008? How high performance do you want i mean it was literally still the 2000s i wouldnt expect that to compete with 2010s tech
Good points!
When you look refurbished site, you will see a lot of macbook air m2, what is the problem?😊