MacBook Air — The 'World's Thinnest Notebook' Without an Optical Drive

The first MacBook Air was announced on 15 January 2008 at Macworld in San Francisco; Apple's Japanese press release is dated the 16th. It was not on sale that day. Apple said it would ship in two weeks, and on 30 January it announced that MacBook Air was shipping. In Japan, orders opened on Apple's online store straight after the announcement, but the first units on public display arrived on 1 February, at the Apple Stores in Ginza and Shibuya. Even then Apple would say only that Japanese shipments would begin "soon", so Japan was not in the first wave.

It cost $1,799 in the US and 229,800 yen including tax in Japan. Apple called it the world's thinnest notebook; that is Apple's own claim.

The dates

Thinness, and what was left out for it

Apple gave the dimensions as 0.16 inches (0.4 cm) at the thinnest point and 0.76 inches (1.94 cm) at the thickest. ITmedia put the weight at about 1.36 kg. In the release Steve Jobs said: "We've built the world's thinnest notebook—without sacrificing a full-size keyboard or a full-size 13-inch display."

The most visible decision was to take the optical drive out of the machine. The external SuperDrive drew its power from the laptop's USB port. Apple argued that many users would not need an optical drive at all, since they could rent movies wirelessly from the iTunes Store, back up wirelessly to Time Capsule, and install software wirelessly using the optical drive of another PC or Mac. The ports were just one USB 2.0, a headphone jack and micro-DVI. The trackpad accepted finger gestures such as pinch, rotate and swipe.

Storage without moving parts was, at this point, an expensive option. The release presented the 64 GB SSD as having no moving parts for added durability.

The Japanese launch

Apple Japan issued its release on 16 January, the day after the announcement. When an ITmedia reporter visited an Apple Store in Tokyo that morning, there was no MacBook Air on display and none in stock; staff said the online shipping estimate of two weeks was the best guide.

Display units arrived on 1 February at the Ginza and Shibuya stores, with four machines on the ground floor in Ginza. Stores outside Tokyo expected theirs a day or more later because of logistics. That day the online Apple Store showed a shipping estimate of two to three weeks.

Later generations

The main milestones after the first model:

In the 2010 release Apple said flash storage was up to twice as fast as a hard drive and up to 90 percent smaller and lighter. Both are Apple's figures. The lightest 11-inch model weighed 2.3 pounds.

The 2020 move to the M1 replaced Intel inside the MacBook Air with Apple's own ARM chip. The announcement, the performance claims and the Japanese launch are covered in the Apple M1 article.

In context

The first MacBook Air cost $1,799 and made the optical drive an external accessory while cutting the ports down, all for thinness. In the 2010 generation the hard disk went too, leaving flash storage only, and the US starting price fell to $999. For the wider story of chips and machines see the semiconductors and hardware timeline; for the company, see Apple.