9to5Mac finally puts an end to 'Brick' speculation and claims that 'Brick' refers to the new manufacturing process for MacBooks.9to5Mac speculates that this will give Apple strategic and technical advantages over other manufacturers, including improvements in complexity of case design, strength and quality. They also point out that Steve Jobs has been known to focus on the details of factory design with his NeXT startup in the 1980's.
The site also ties this back to recent comments by Peter Oppenheimer that Apple will continue to introduce state of the art products that their competitors are unable to match.
Finally, they expect that the MacBooks will indeed be released on October 14th.
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No , they'd just get the internals shipped to the new sites and bingo , all assembled in one place ....not much on the fuel bill that I can see.
Sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads!
Somehow, I do not see Apple carving out a case from a solid lump of aluminium, far too expensive and wasteful.
Carved out of one piece of aluminum? no screws to hold it together? Flush edges!?
That sounds beautiful!
On a less happy note that also sounds like it will have a non-user replaceable battery, no user replaceable hard drive and no user upgradeable RAM.
CARP!
It would waste a fair whack of energy to keep re-melting aluminium.How is this wasteful? Whatever's leftover is melted and made into another brick.
People don't seem to realize how BIG this is! It isn't just about new Macbooks and Macbook Pros. This means that the case problems will be lowered SOO MUCH, because of a better manufacturing process. ALSO, there will be better quality of design (no screws, one piece of metal). Finally, it is something that Apple can truly manage. Think about it, you can manage a factory in the U.S. much better than one in China. This would lead to a better product in the end.
By the way, if it is better managed, than suspect less leaks...
FTW
Not really. If you don't have to re-melt aluminium large amounts of waste aluminium you don't have the cost of running a furnance, the costs of labour carrying out the process, the costs of the facilities etc etc. Limiting waste and double-handling is one of the first design principles that would go into manufacturing a product. Less stuffing around, less wasting of energy in metal = easy to manufacture and cheaper product.
This isn't true for everything. Sometimes domestic labour and costs of setting up a manufacturing facility aren't favorable on returns. If this were the case every business would do absolutely every single part of their manufacturing processes in house. The reality is quite different. Outsourcing saves money in many cases. Firms can concentrate on individual components. Economies of scale is a powerful concept.Doju said:
edit> see above ..beat me to it
It does make some sense , maybe Apple will press the 'bricks' into a rough shape for the lasers to finish ?.....also it doesn't really matter what value the raw material becomes when it has been used because ,as you said ,it will be recycled , and in house too ...another money saver .
