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Intel transition and "back to the Mac"

With PowerPC chips falling behind in performance, price, and efficiency, Steve Jobs announced in 2005 the Mac transition to Intel processors, because the operating system had been developed for both architectures since the beginning. PowerPC apps run using transparent Rosetta emulation, and Windows boots natively using Boot Camp. This transition helped contribute to a few years of growth in Mac sales.

After the iPhone 's 2007 release, Apple began a multi-year effort to bring many iPhone innovations "back to the Mac", including multi-touch gesture support, instant wake from sleep, and fast flash storage. At Macworld 2008, Jobs introduced the first MacBook Air by taking it out of a manila envelope, touting it as the "world's thinnest notebook". The MacBook Air favors wireless technologies over physical ports, and lacks FireWire, an optical drive, or a replaceable battery. The Remote Disc feature accesses discs in other networked computers. A decade after its launch, journalist Tom Warren wrote that the MacBook Air had "immediately changed the future of laptops", starting the ultrabook trend. OS X Lion added new software features first introduced with the iPad, such as FaceTime, full-screen apps, document autosaving and versioning, and a bundled Mac App Store to replace software install discs with online downloads. It gained support for Retina displays, which had been introduced earlier with the iPhone 4. iPhone-like multi-touch technology was progressively added to all MacBook trackpads, and to desktop Macs through the Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad. The 2010 MacBook Air added an iPad-inspired standby mode, "instant-on" wake from sleep, and flash memory storage.

After criticism by Greenpeace, Apple improved the ecological performance of its products. The 2008 MacBook Air is free of toxic chemicals like mercury, bromide, and PVC, and with smaller packaging. The enclosures of the iMac and unibody MacBook Pro were redesigned with the more recyclable aluminum and glass.

On February 24, 2011, the MacBook Pro became the first computer to support Intel's new Thunderbolt connector, with two-way transfer speeds of 10 Gbit/s, and backward compatibility with Mini DisplayPort.