He could have turned it on, surfed the web, and come up with pictures of it. Come to think of it, in TSA’s custody he probably couldn’t do any of these things.
As someone who flies every week, TSA does the best it can with what it has to work with.
They see tens of thousands of laptops at major airports. The Mac Air looked different and that throws up a red flag.
TSA did the right thing. Booting it up is the correct procedure.
The author must have been cutting his flight time close to miss his flig.