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Feasibility of New Solid Aluminum Manufacturing Process?
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Well, the benefit would be also that if they pull more assembly in house - it would close down a massive hole in their security relating to new and upcoming products. Every time something happens in some far flung factory overseas - someone leaks information of a new product.
Its going to be interesting, however, to see how they can control costs and whether they can justify the costs to the shareholders given the financial melt down that is occurring right now in the US economy.
This interested me so I found a video, here it is if anyone cares.
http://www.azom.com/materials-video-details.asp?VidID=64
I feel your pain. But the wait is hopefully over soon. Everyone needs to chill, and just wait and see. Who cares about production processes or aluminum blocks or budgets or quater profits? I just finally want to see and decide to buy the d*** thing, or not, if it's coming!
Hey, I like that. Like a real docking station. I've had clients have a lot of trouble dealing with their notebook/desktop data synchronization. It really can get to be a pain in the a**.
Docking stations often aren't that much easier due to the possibility of bent pins and gunk getting stuck in the slots/ports.
Having something like this could be a solid solution... Maybe the notebook and the dock could communicate through bluetooth or maybe USB...
Bluetooth sure. USB - you still got ports, which would be your gunk problem. although i never had gunk in any of my ports...
As far as bent pins... Think about how Dell does their docking through a 1 highspeed D shaped port and also how the old parallel printers used to connect to the cable on the printer side. No Pins, but rather slides together almost like a USB.
Now apple could take that similar concept and apply it here. the tablet slides in on rails and into the port. The imac is solid with the except.
1. Hole in side for sliding in tablet
2. Hole in front for the larger LCD
3. Hole in back for electonic component that holds your power, USB, firewire, DVI (incase you want 2 monitors), etc connectors.
4. the rails are actually part of the solid design behind the LCD.
Then all you have to do is glue in the highspeed port electronic board (or screw - like I said lack of screws is for the case only), run a couple of flat or small cables to the LCD logic board and the port electronic board. then silicone in the screen.
Cut in cost:
1. You only need to buy a good LCD from someone.
2. there are 100's of electonic makers that can put together a port logic board
3. Your desktop design never changes (ok maybe every 10 years or more just to keep from looking aged over time.
4. all your innovation effort is then reduced to the portable line (ie you just eliminiated the imac from needing updates or designs). Less models to have to update, yet still keeps the mid-range all in one desktop line.
I think Apple better release a video and upload it to YouTube showing the entire manufacturing process from "brick" to final product so people will understand. The only way to quiet the "how can this be? 
" chatter.
" chatter.
...think about it. 1 piece of aluminum, nothing to insert but glass/lcd and few connectors...I see rumors starting to come together
i associate your name with insightful contributions here. So I like what you've suggested, and have wondered about that concept before.
But isn't the product combo you envision handicapped because the screen size would be limited to the size of the tablet screen? I LIKE the idea, but i think to work the "mother ship" would have to have its own big screen, and it would be the guts, the CPU & etc., that would be part of perhaps a netbook-sized tablet, that would slide in behind that larger screen. Results:
1. replacement for iMacs--you get the 20 or 24" iMac "mothership" plus a 9 or 11 or ?? inch tablet
2. your data is always the same on the road and at home, though you could have additional storage in that "chin" on the mothership
The "brick" could thus be a building block for a variety of iterations. It could be a standalone macbook. With apple's nifty little keyboard, it's a netbook computer. With the right connectors, it's a NAV system for your car, or a DVD for backseat passengers (build the optical drive into the car-mounting system). With a cinema display-like "mothership" with an accommodating dock/slot, it's a large desktop computer. There's probably even a way to have additional processing power in the "chin" for people who need a more powerful unit when working at their desktop.
Why then would apple's profit margins dip? Well, if you could get a tablet/netbook PLUS iMac-like "mothership for, say, 150% of what those two separate products would sell for, you've reduced sales--and thus profits--considerably. On the other hand, for people who otherwise wouldn't have bought both, you've created a purchasing track that actually increases the sales yield to the company, the way that $21k base-price car you go to look at ends up at $28k when you option it out.
So--elaborate on this idea? Poke holes in it?
as much as we want to hear of new products, for the general market this is NOT a good time to announce something.
a) the target consumer, rightly distracted by world-wide financial news, is little inclined to respond eagerly to an offer to buy;
b) the announcement would get far less attention (and how skillfully jobs plays that angle) in this economy-roiled news cycle.
that's pretty cool. and I like about the recycling bit. solve the problem with plastic computers ending up in landfills - oh wait that is illegal now in most states. ok, all those dead computers in warehouses where companies wonder what to do with the unusable parts.....
Feasibility of new solid............
"I'd be shocked if they started doing any of their own assembly," says Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore. "That's the kind of drastic step that would hurt profits. I'm just not sure what the advantages would be."
Probably the same people who thought Apple stores were a bad idea.
"I'd be shocked if they started doing any of their own assembly," says Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore. "That's the kind of drastic step that would hurt profits. I'm just not sure what the advantages would be."
Probably the same people who thought Apple stores were a bad idea.
read my second post. You slide in the tablet behind the BIG lcd (what ever big is - 20, 24 ,etc). the high speed port then communicates to the LCD and ports on the back. again, think of Dell's dock (and I hate using Dell, but since 90% of PC owners are familiar with Dell and truthfully, they are the only docks I see around anymore). You are not limited by the small screen anymore. instead of having a VGA cable out the back of the dock to an LCD, you now have an internal cable from the highspeed port board to the inverter/logic board on the LCD.
Now, you also eliminated the extra cables cluttering up your desk or looking messy behind the desk - all is internal to the imac-like frame.
yeah, whoever did the photoshops (they are not mine - I am adding some thoughts on how this could be accomplished) did not really do a good job to show the larger screen with the smaller tablet like. the price factor could add up like this:
1. $900 - $1500 for the tablet (depends on specs)
2. $300 (majority of cost is lcd) for the doc. you can buy a tower case for under $100 and the small logic boards and cables are not that much)
sio for under $1500, you can get the best of both.
No wonder the world has going completely materialistic ,...kids are raised with the " you get a cookie "line if they do something well or good, this then translates into adulthood and manifests as seeking a higher & higher salary to buy the cookies of childhood , ....I bet Steve could buy a good few
I think I need more sleep
but even when fully charged I know those mockups cannot be far from what we'll see next year.....just give us a new Mini now please Apple, oh , & maybe a Macbook or two , thanks .Sounds like what we've heard before anytime rumors of radical change started coming out.
"Apple would never replace macos 9 with a unix/next based OS. Never."
"Apple will never switch to intel cpus. Never."
I've got a hunch these rumors are true because the anti-change people are saying "Never!".
"Apple would never replace macos 9 with a unix/next based OS. Never."
"Apple will never switch to intel cpus. Never."
I've got a hunch these rumors are true because the anti-change people are saying "Never!".
then buy now and sell it on ebay later. I see what are pretty useless (spec wise) pismos, clambooks, emacs, etc selling on ebay at a pretty good dollar amount. someone will always be interested in your old, slightly-used machine. and from what I last read - you can transfer apple care warrenties...
Apple's plans etc.
I believe Apple is definitely up to something, this report sounds sceptic, yet it matches up with several things high ranking people at Apple have spoken about: The fact that profits would be down for a while, that they would introduce products that the competition wouldn't be able to match etc.
While it remains to be seen how much of usual Apple reality distortion parameters have been mixed into this equation, considering the Next computer venture of Steve jobs, and it's manufacturing process, I see no reason why Apple couldn't do the same, and improve on the concept, we are 20 years on from that, so the processes are more refined, cheaper, and more advanced than back then.
I for one am looking forward to some truly groundbreaking designs in the next few years, firmly putting Apple in a position to grow even further.
Low profits for a while may be, but if they succeed at it, those profits will turn huge, margin per unit may not, but the volume being sold will make up for it
I believe Apple is definitely up to something, this report sounds sceptic, yet it matches up with several things high ranking people at Apple have spoken about: The fact that profits would be down for a while, that they would introduce products that the competition wouldn't be able to match etc.
While it remains to be seen how much of usual Apple reality distortion parameters have been mixed into this equation, considering the Next computer venture of Steve jobs, and it's manufacturing process, I see no reason why Apple couldn't do the same, and improve on the concept, we are 20 years on from that, so the processes are more refined, cheaper, and more advanced than back then.
I for one am looking forward to some truly groundbreaking designs in the next few years, firmly putting Apple in a position to grow even further.
Low profits for a while may be, but if they succeed at it, those profits will turn huge, margin per unit may not, but the volume being sold will make up for it
While I think there is the possibility that we might see some new type of production method for Macs going forward, if it really is revolutionary... I would think that such a grandiose unveiling is something only the Macworld Stevenote™ could provide. In other words, let's look for this January instead of next Tuesday.
Personally, I hope this new manufacturing process takes into account things other than pure aesthetic style (energy intensity, environmental impact, remanufacturability). Xerox, for example, already does this extensively... hey, maybe Steve can make a visit and get inspired (again).
Personally, I hope this new manufacturing process takes into account things other than pure aesthetic style (energy intensity, environmental impact, remanufacturability). Xerox, for example, already does this extensively... hey, maybe Steve can make a visit and get inspired (again
).