Rumors are buzzing that Apple has been working on a revolutionary manufacturing process involving lasers and waterjets and solid blocks of aluminum for the upcoming MacBooks. The contention is that the rumored "Brick" product actually refers not to a product itself, but the manufacturing method for the MacBooks.
Site 9to5mac, who originated the rumor, state:
It is the beginning of the new Apple manufacturing process to make MacBooks. It is totally revolutionary, a game changer. One of the biggest Apple innovations in a decade.The MacBook manufacturing process up to this point has been outsourced to Chinese or Taiwanese manufacturers like Foxconn. Now Apple is in charge. The company has spent the last few years building an entirely new manufacturing process that uses lasers and jets of water to carve the MacBooks out of a brick of aluminum.
They go on to cite the following advantages:
- Carving out of aluminum eliminates the need to bend the metal and create weak spots or microfolds and rifts.
- There are no seams in the final product, so it is smooth.
- Screws aren't needed to tie the products together.
- The shell is one piece of metal so it is super light, super strong and super cheap.
- You can be a whole lot more creative with the design if you don't have to machine it.
In reality, Apple has been using laser and waterjet methods for quite sometime, for example the glowing LED that appears behind a "solid" front face of the MacBooks is apparently achieved with laser-cutting to thin out and partially perforate the wall in that one area.
So there is nothing particularly novel about user laser and waterjets as they are used frequently in smaller size production runs of the tens of thousands. The difference is scaling them up to the hundreds of thousands that Apple produces in.
(I should note here that although Apple and frog design, where I work, worked together in the 1980's and pioneered injection molding techniques with plastic that are now commonplace on computer products, I don't have any insider knowledge whatsoever on this rumor.)
For example, if you look at the iPod Shuffle you can tell it is hogged out aluminum. On such a small product this is do-able. On a large product like a laptop this would typically result in a massive amount of waste (so kiss your green credentials goodbye). And the notion that this is somehow cheaper than stamping thin sheets or molding plastic is completely wrong - it's much more expensive.
However, starting from a solid piece of aluminum allows tighter tolerances and mechanical features that can't easily be achieved with molding, stamping or extruding. If you look carefully at these pictures of a MacBook Air that Gizmodo took apart, you can see some bosses and undercuts that would be difficult to do with typical molding techniques. But there are some more exotic methods like hydroforming and near-net casting that are more common in aerospace and military contexts could probably achieve the same result. Another example of a company investing in manufacturing IP to give it a competitive edge is Shimano, who has built up expertise in super-thin wall, super high tolerance hollow forging for its bike components.
But given the complexity of the components that need to get tightly mounted inside a laptop casing, and the number of ports and so on that need to be exposed to the outside, it's unlikely that it will literally be a hollowed out block of aluminum. And even if it was, it would not particularly help much with weight (it's still aluminum) compared to the stamped case of the current Aluminum MacBook Pros.
(And though 9to5mac makes a big deal out of "aircraft grade aluminum", there's nothing particularly exotic about that these days either, it's quite a commonly used material).
What's remarkable is how Apple is scaling up techniques normally used for limited production runs - limited because they are more expensive on a per-part basis. But clearly Apple has been figuring out how to get the economies of scaling, and picking off certain techniques one by one to try them out on successive product introductions. A new MacBook makes sense to bring several of them to culmination as a flagship product.
Having said that, and not discounting Apple's ability to go beyond the bounds of what others pull off, going by the 9to5mac article there isn't necessarily anything very revolutionary being described.
(Credit:
Seattle Post Intelligencer)
Is Apple's PR wearing thin?
Sure, there was the MacBook Air and the buzz around "thinnovation." But wasn't that--pun intended--too "thin" for a big media splash, especially compared with past years? Now that MacWorld is over, pundits are reviewing Apple's PR efforts, and when the expectations are so high (and a company is so good at it), it is not too surprising that some are disappointed with what they've seen this year. Frank Shaw, a PR professional at Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's lead PR agency, is one of them, and you have to give him credit for being so vocal in public despite his affiliation with the Apple rival. (It would be easy to dismiss his criticism as just a Microsoft cabal.) Shaw is wondering whether Apple's shock and awe, event-focused product launch PR philosophy has lost its relevance in a time of always-on communications:
"The concept of holding news, building expectations, and then unveiling a massive surprise has been super effective, and no more so than last year with the iPhone. It was a tour de force from a communications standpoint. This recent Macworld? Not so much."
He refers to the Feiler Faster Thesis, which states that people's ability to retain and process information has accelerated, resulting in significantly faster news cycles:
"So in this world, is a twice a year news bang sufficient? The answer could be yes--but there is little room for events like today in that world. Apple stepped to the plate today, IMHO, and hit...a single. The company won't be up to bat again for a while...if you are only up a few times a year, you better hit some home runs."
He admits that he's a proponent of "small ball" rather than "home run ball," and it's hard to judge whether that makes him old-school or PR avant-garde:
"I've never been a big fan of 'giving up control of the message' or 'information wants to be free' or 'user generated content will rule the world' or 'it's all about the conversation.' But I'm a huge believer in the value of ongoing communication, to the right audiences, about the topics they care most about, in a regular, sustained way."
iPhone guilt
But Apple products raise more than just PR questions. On the O'Reilly blog, Dale Dougherty takes Apple's 1984 slogan "The computer for the rest of us" as a starting point to meditate on the "rest of the rest of us"--those excluded from our high-tech frenzy and without the means to participate in the Apple universe of godly gadgets. He does so because he feels "iPhone guilt":
"Taking the iPhone out of my pocket in a public place makes me uncomfortable. Some people ask nicely about it: 'How do you like it?' But I'm keenly aware that others don't have what I have and they notice it. The iPhone is a great phone but I'm conscious that it's helping to define 'the rest of us versus them.'"
Dougherty's moral treatise poses some uncomfortable questions:
"Is the high-tech world indifferent to the problems of the poor? Do we have any competence that matters in helping them find a better life? Or are we just making 'the happy few' that much happier? What is a social network if the people facing the toughest problems are not part of it? They don't need more signs that tell them that they are on their own. The have-nots don't do networking. It doesn't get them anywhere."
"Whether it's the latest from Web 2.0 or Apple Computer, do we need to ask what it means for those who aren't able to take part? Does it help them catch up or put them further behind? That calculation is part of the social cost of any new technology. We might think of it like we're starting to think about our oversized carbon footprint and its impact on the physical world. Is there any way to offset the negative social impact of the technology that we're so busily developing?"
"It's a challenge for the 'best of us' to address."
A brief run through Macworld gave two major impressions:
1. It was packed. Even more crowded than CES (though much smaller of course).
2. The signal-to-noise ratio of interesting products was way better than CES.
Let's take a look at some of the things that caught my interest from a design point of view, starting with Apple.
The MacBook Air really is quite breathtaking. It feels great in the hand, and the break from pure rectangular geometry makes it more interesting to tumble in your hands. It's sort of a giant iPod, taking on the pillowed look. The corner radii are much larger than previous MacBooks, giving it a softer aesthetic. I had been wondering when Apple's designers would get tired of the strict geometric style and start to branch out--this appears to be it.
Crowds 3 people deep to see MBA
For someone (not unlike myself) who spends quite a bit of time in transit and on planes, the light weight and small size (won't get squished by the airplane seat in front of you crashing back) are perfect. While many have expressed their opinions about where Apple should have left in/cut features, my one quibble is with the exclusion of an ethernet port. Yes, there's a dongle adapter (extra $), but it's one more thing to remember and carry for those still common hotels that don't have wireless. And since it only has one USB connector, it will tie that up, so you'll have a choice of ethernet or, say, USB key. Also, it requires a video out adaptor, but I carry one of those anyway for VGA projectors.
The MBA is another example of Apple pushing the envelope on connectivity and data transfer methods. The original Mac adopted the nascent 3.5" floppy disk, Apple was one of the first to adopt 802.11, it switched to USB and dropped legacy proprietary connectors, and it created the Firewire standard (which made it slow to adopt USB 2...). Every time people have complained that the sky is falling, but each time Apple has judged the timing just right and has hit the adoption curve at the right point, and it all works out.
Next: Belkin
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