Review: Apple’s iPhone Air is a bunch of small changes that add up to something big
by Andrew Cunningham from Ars Technica - All content on (#708GP)
If you'll indulge me for a moment, here's some ancient history.
In 2008, when Apple took the very first MacBook Air out of a manila envelope, it was not positioned as Apple's new entry-level Mac laptop. The innovative but flawed system started at $1,799, far above the $999 price of the entry-level plastic MacBook and well into MacBook Pro territory.
In those early, formative years, the "Air" branding denoted not a midrange or entry-level model but an alternate branching path from the baseline MacBook. Paying Apple more money could get you more computer-the Pro model, with more processor, more screen, more storage, more everything-or it could get you a different kind of computer, with fundamentally different benefits and trade-offs.