Apple’s MacBook Air: Once Again the MacBook You Want

Apple’s once popular portable is smaller, faster and more secure than ever. It’s also more expensive

A decade ago, Steve Jobs pulled off what might have been his ultimate bit of showmanship, slipping the first MacBook Air, then the world’s thinnest notebook computer, out of a manila folder and into his hand. He held it aloft, grinning like he, too was marveling at its impossibly thin chassis.

At its thinnest point, the MacBook Air was just 0.16 inches thick, the iconic wedge design, flaring to three quarters of an inch at the back of the device. The introduction of that sub-3-lb portable spawned myriad copy-cat designs. I still remember a competitor bringing his own new ultra-thin laptop to my office inside another manila folder.

MacBook Air was wildly popular with consumers, as well. I saw them at every office and students chose it as their go-to school laptop.

Over the years, Apple updated components and introduced a smaller 11.6-inch model, but eventually the MacBook Air got nudged out of the spotlight by a generation of thinner, lighter ,and more affordable hybrids that stuffed all the computing technology inside touch-screen tablet-size chassis and had removable or fold-away keyboards. Apple appeared to have…