The New MacBook Air is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Surface Laptop (Premium)

When Surface Laptop 2 debuted with the same legacy ports as its predecessor, I died a little inside. But things look better today. A lot better.

So thanks, Apple. On behalf of an anxious Microsoft user base, thanks.

Like so many stories that involve Apple, this one will require me to correct the history a bit. See, there's this fable that Apple changed the world in 2008 when it introduced the MacBook Air. Everyone seems to remember the infamous moment when Steve Jobs pulled the thin and light wonder out of an interoffice envelope to gasps of delight and cheers.

Yeah. That's didn't happen.

Well, Jobs did pull the first MacBook Air out of an envelope 10 years ago. But the MacBook Air he pulled out did not change the world at all, and it was absolutely not a "wonder" of any kind.

See, the first MacBook Air was a dog.

Yes, it was very thin. But Apple made serious concessions to power and usability by making the MacBook Air so thin in 2008. That MacBook Air was "powered"---really, constricted---by its lackluster Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM, 4200 RPM HDD (yes, really; a 64 GB SSD was an expensive build-time option only), and its low-res 1280 x 800 LED display. There was only a single USB port, and it popped out behind an inelegant door. This was at a time when the MacBook and MacBook Pro were bristling with expansion.

The first MacBook Air did bring us some innovations, like the MagSafe power connector. In fact, Jobs spent a bunch of time bragging about how Apple had solved power cable management since the MacBook Air's power brick had little pop-out handles one could wind the cable around. Of course, both MagSafe and that cable management system are gone today, so that's kind of beside the point.

For the most part, the MacBook Air of 2008 was an idea, a theory. A peek at what computing might be like in the future. It was a bit like the iPad Pro is right now, elegant but of dubious value and use. Or for the Microsoft fan, like Windows 10 S (S mode).

Oh, I forgot the best part. Pricing started at $1800.

Anyway, the MacBook Air didn't sell well. And I'm sure there were some concerns that Apple had another Power Mac G4 Cube disaster on its hands.

But then something magical did happen. In 2010, Apple announced the second generation MacBook Air. This is the machine that everyone thinks of when they think MacBook Air. And unlike its predecessor, it was both innovative and usable.

Everything about the second MacBook Air was better. More power, more RAM, more storage (all of which was SSD), and more connectivity: It shipped with two USB ports plus SDXC card slot. It was even a tad lighter than the machine it replaced. More to the point, the second-generation MacBook Air kicked off a new product category that we called the "Ultrabook" in the PC market. (That's an Intel marketing term that means "a PC that looks and works like the MacBook Air but runs Windows.")

For the next several years, the MacBook Air defin...