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APPLE SILICON
The M4 MacBook Air Fails to Deliver on The Promise of Apple Silicon
When will Apple reclaim its leadership in laptop portability?
Deftly sliding it out of a manila envelope, Steve Jobs revealed the first MacBook Air during the MacWorld 2008 keynote address. While the MacBook Air was incredibly thin, even renowned Applephile John Gruber griped that he would have preferred something more portable:
I’d have rather seen a smaller footprint, a la the old 12-inch PowerBook G4 — something just exactly as wide as a full keyboard. I’d prefer to sacrifice screen size on the notebook in exchange for an even smaller machine — with the assumption that when I’m at my desk, I’d be using a 20-something-inch external display.
Zoolander and SNL can poke fun at the desire for ever-more-portable technology but for many people, it is the deciding factor when upgrading. My son-in-law is holding on to his iPhone 12 mini because every iPhone in Apple’s current lineup is too big, and he’s not the only one. I held on to my 2016 MacBook Pro until the M1 version launched in 2021, only to find that it was half a pound heavier. I wound up switching to the MacBook Air.
