The MacBook Air was Apple's most successful FAIL

if you're of the age of 20 then you probably know this ad [Music] that's right the original MacBook Air was a groundbreaking device when Steve Jobs unveiled it on stage by pulling it out of a manila envelope the world kind of went ballistic we're talking about January of 2008 here this was a time when netbooks were all the rage this is before the concept of the Ultrabook the thin and light the portable laptop was really a thing and so what most of the industry was doing at that point was miniaturizing normal PCS that meant miniature keyboards miniature displays and miniature processors too much compromising on less than a full-size display less than a full-size keyboard and we think you could put even more performance in one of these products the MacBook Air promised to be the solution to all of those problems but there was a problem uh it it sucked really [Music] the story of the first generation MacBook Air really is quite interesting but first I do have to thank today's video sponsor case coup you can kind of think of the magic stand case as two for the price of one you're getting a case with military grade drop protection and magsafe compatibility but you're also getting a kickstand case because that magsafe ring flips out and allows you to prop your phone up in portrait and landscape orientations the magic stand case comes in a bunch of colors to match the finishes of your iPhone plus case coup is now accepting clarna at checkout which makes things even easier so definitely check out the link in the description below and while you're down there you're not going to want to miss Genius Bar goes dark that is my exclusive one night only event that I'm going to be hosting live in person in San Francisco the day after WWDC this year's WWDC might feature the next big step of the MacBook Air a 15-inch one as well as Apple's mixed reality a headset so this is a big moment and I'm really excited to share it with you guys we have a venue booked it costs a lot of money and I cannot wait to be there with you guys so check out the link in the description below get your tickets now the event is made possible by clean my Mac X which I have been using for a really long time and they're a huge supporter of the channel I'm so excited I wish I had more time to talk about it but I want to get you guys back into that MacBook Air okay so let's back up here and set the stage it's January of 2008 the iPhone just launched six months ago and things are going pretty well your new operating system leopard a new iMac lots of new iPods oh the iPhone I almost forgot the iPhone right apple is having a bit of a Renaissance moment iPod sales are through the roof and only increasing and the Mac is entering year two of the Intel transition this was a perfect time for Apple to shake things up in a previous video I talked about the original MacBook Pro which was basically an Intel modified version of The PowerBook G4 the design is very very similar and in fact the same goes for the plastic MacBook which replaced the iBook so Apple really hasn't got any new designs for the MacBook enter the MacBook Air this is during a time where netbooks are going crazy and apple thought that they could do it better especially now that they've got Intel to help them out so they devised a pretty clever plan and rather than focusing on miniaturizing a computer Steve Jobs had a very clear picture he wanted a full-size 13 inch display a full-size backlit keyboard and he wanted a real Core 2 Duo processor we said we want that chip in this product but we need to go to smaller packaging the same die on a smaller package it sounds easy it's not they they spent a lot of invest in a lot of engineering to create this for us this is the same chip in a package that is 60 smaller it's iPhone 2.0 this is what happens when the company that just revolutionized the telephone gets a swing at the laptop or at least that's what it looks like because under the surface there are a lot of problems with the MacBook Air the first problem was the hard drive obviously when you're shrinking a computer to this degree making it so thin that the magsafe port is on the underside and you have to make a new magsafe charger just for this laptop well there's going to be some Corners that have to be cut Apple decided to use the iPod as the source of their drives that's right a 4200 RPM hard drive that was only used for playing music is now being expected to run OS 10. that's not exactly ideal but but fortunately there is an SSD option for a low low price of a thousand dollars oh but the hard drive is really just the tip of the iceberg the other problem is they soldered the RAM on so there's only two gigs they used a really really flimsy heatsink it's basically a piece of tin foil and the major problem that Core 2 Duo that was such a feat of engineering to get in here well it doesn't really work all that well because chopping down a CPU and then putting a piece of tin foil over it basically is a recipe for this thing overheating and that's exactly what it did to the extent that if you actually tried to push this machine at all it overheats and it disables one of the cores so it it doesn't even really act like a Core 2 Duo when you need it to there's also build quality issues the trackpad button is known to get stuck the hinges get very loose I mean look at mine this is this is one of the better ones they get real real bad honestly I could go on but that would be boring because it's it's a lot so what Apple did to try to resolve the problem in late 2008 is this this was the second revision of the MacBook Air and it does solve a lot of the issues they used a slightly better processor that wasn't as prone to overheating and disabling all of its cores they also gave this thing the Nvidia GeForce 9400m chipset Graphics that they gave to the MacBook Pro which was announced in unibody form around the same time that did make a really big difference because the original MacBook Air was using Intel X 1600 GMA whatever nonsense Graphics it's basically like using the windows basic display adapter when you don't have your drivers installed all the time oh and they ditched the iPod hard drive so that made a really big difference but as much as those improvements helped there was no real way of getting around the fact that this was an expensive and very flawed machine it started at 17.99 which was just two hundred dollars less than a 15 inch MacBook Pro I've got one right here this is the late 2008 so these machines were sold alongside each other now I've got these both patched and running Mac OS Catalina and that gives us a pretty good idea of how well these machines have aged they both have 128 gigabyte ssds they both have Core 2 Duos this one has four gigs of RAM and this one has two but I can't really do anything about that and this comparison really lets you see the difference in longevity for these two machines for example I fired up cinebench R20 and if we speed that up a little bit you'll notice that well both of these machines are very very slow by today's standards the MacBook Air is just absolutely chugging by the end of my test I was able to get 266 points out of the 15 inch MacBook Pro and that cut down to just 120 on the MacBook Air so as as much as Steve Jobs love to tout the fact that Apple was using a real Core 2 Duo and not some cut down Intel atom this was still a very very major compromise to be making with only a two hundred dollar saving there's a reason why the first generation MacBook Air is pretty rare it was very flawed it was very expensive it was not a practical machine for most people to use in 2010 Apple completely revamped the MacBook Air with a design that basically stuck around until 2018 and that that machine absolutely killed it Apple has made a habit of missing the mark somewhat on their first attempt and then really smashing it on round two I mean look at the iPhone iPad and Apple watch just to name a few and the effects of missing the mark on the first generation MacBook Air are pretty noticeable I mean if you try to go and search these things on eBay they're not that common well these unibody MacBook Pros sold like hot cakes the MacBook Air was a much tougher cell with those compromises and that price point so the first generation MacBook Air as a standalone product it was not very good even later revisions like this are deeply deeply flawed and they didn't have anywhere near the lifespan that later Max came to see but at the end of the day the MacBook Air was still a revolutionary product it introduced things like the multi-touch trackpad the unibody enclosure and the design language that Apple used for the Mac for years to come but more than that it introduced the concept of the thin and light laptop Apple looked at the netbook and they said that's not it that's not the future what people want is a real laptop that's small and eventually that's what caught on probably 80 percent or more of the laptops sold today fit into the category that this MacBook Air started so as much as it is a pretty bad product I think we're better off for it let me know your thoughts on this in the comments below again thank you guys so much for watching and I'll catch you in the next one [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Luke Miani

Views: 98,873

Keywords: apple, macbook, macbook air, m1, m2, m1 macbook air, m2 macbook air, m3 macbook air, tech, tech evolution, evolution, technology, apple failure, tech failure

Id: iUdHm7hefBs

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Sun May 14 2023