MacBook Air with Windows 7 review: the ultrabook to rule them all?
Does putting Windows 7 on the MacBook Air make it the best ultrabook? Let's be honest: The ultrabook phenomenon is by and large Intel's and the rest of the PC industry's reaction to Apple's MacBook Air.
Context & Ripple Effects
The MacBook Air has traveled a long arc in this corpus: CrunchGear dismissed it in January 2008 as basically useless, yet by August 2011 PC World was arguing Windows laptop makers couldn't catch up to it. Running Windows 7 on Apple hardware is not new either — Gearlog tried it on the MacBook Pro back in November 2008 — but applying it to the Air turns the comparison into a direct verdict on the entire ultrabook category.
First-order effects
- Ultrabook makers building Intel-spec thin-and-lights now face a benchmark that pairs Apple's chassis with Microsoft's OS — if the Air wins running Windows, their differentiation problem is hardware, not software.
- Windows buyers who wanted the Air's design get a sanctioned path to it, expanding Apple's addressable market beyond its own OS base.
Second-order effects
- Intel's ultrabook program is exposed as reactive: the review frames the whole category as the PC industry's answer to a product Apple shipped four years earlier, pressuring OEMs to compete on more than copied proportions.
- Apple sells hardware into competitors' customer bases without lifting a finger — every 'best ultrabook' verdict markets the Mac to people who never intended to leave Windows.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, 'ultrabook' becomes a spec label chasing a reference design owned by a company that doesn't participate in it — the same dynamic that let Apple define the premium tier regardless of which OS a reviewer loads onto it.
The trend: Laptop competition is consolidating around Apple's hardware as the reference standard, with OS choice increasingly decoupled from the machine it runs on.