I dont really care whether its a better machine than this or that. What I want to know is how apple is able to afford to mass produce a machined aluminum housing?
Just the idea of designing parts without draft is awesome.
Anyways heres a link to the video.
Whats with Ive’s new moniker of ‘Jony’?!
This site is friggin amazing.
I’ll stick to simple questions from now on.
Whats better a black or white mouse?
That was a pretty inane response. Nothing at all to do with your question. It happens from time to time.
I think Apple’s able to make the MacBooks, MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs the way they do because of volume. They’re able to invest in the machinery once, and then crank out a very largne number of notebooks. The higher the volume, the lower the per unit cost.
Also I think the reduced number of parts makes assembly faster and the reduced amount of material makes it cost less. Plus, you know Apple makes a good bit of profit on those laptops. It’s not like they’re exactly cheap.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong. This is just one student’s musings on this topic.
I think Ivy’s new identity may have some tangential relationship with the new ‘brick’ manufacturing process, but I may be mistaken…
The thing is, all the mentioned laptops besides the PROs use a plastic injection molded body. The Pros use a lazer cut or stamped aluminum sheet (i believe), all of which are efficient ways of high volume production. Milling on the other hand (the new macbook) regardless of the fact that its repeated pattern cannot compare to amount of units you can produce per time compared to injection molding. I maybe wrong since I’m used to conventional automated milling practices.
If someone where to ask me to machine that aluminum housing alone I would quote it at $2000. $500 a unit if I were to contract 10,000+ units. If I were to injection mold that part I’d quote it at 50 cents per unit.
Am I the only one baffled on how apple is able to do this? Even if apple were to sell the new machines at $4000 a pop it still wouldnt make sense.
Dong: I’m baffled too. That’s why they are the first and only.
Also, what about the environment. Aluminum takes a lot of energy to manufacture, then they are wasting so much in the milling. Sure it can be recylced, but again, with a lot of energy. Plastic, even if it were tossed at the end of the life cycle seems more responsible. Is it just me?
I’m for a wait and see attitude guys, I’m not too hot about the design of the new pros/macbooks.
As for the manufacturing process…It seems to be that apple is trying to cut their list of production lines and moulds used. Meaning that they used to have a production line for the injection moulding and a production line for aluminum parts. Now all they have is 2 production lines for 2 different sizes. Same material used for both laptops so they can basically use the same process.
Whats more, since they don’t use moulds or stamp templates, if they wanted to vary the design, they can easily do so without having to invest in new moulds or templates.
On an the environmental side, I dunno, more energy used, more friendly materials, theres always a trade off somewhere in such a big corporation…