It's still a dumb argument.
Riddle me this - What do any of you hope to achieve through arguing over the differences between Aluminium and Plastic? Get out more, please - there are far more worrying issues in the world.
It took me a long time getting exactly this point through to aiqw, who is very passionate about this, as you've seen.
Very mature "L".... not. Please set an example for the rest of the forum users to NOT use back-sass to something that doesn't deserve comment...
Having said that, sportguy is right. I shouldn't just back-sass, no matter how entertaining it is to me, so in case, I don't know, somebody reading this thread for a short, silly moment got at all curious about which actually does cost more, or why Apple adopted the unibody thing in the first place, I'll end the blasted argument, so far as Apple was concerned, here.
Before I post the obvious end to the argument, let me make this clear: I don't understand how it's possible to care, either way. I am thus an objective observer to this argument. I don't care which side wins. It's a dumb argument. I don't mean to participate so much as put a stop to it.
Here we go:
To answer this question, logically, it really is only relevant to ask, "What does Apple think?" It actually took me less time to find the answer to this question than to trace back to how this argument unfolded. It started something like this:
From the clock on the side of the MacBook box above it appears the white MacBook will still have a 7-hour battery. The difference in $200 comes from the battery, RAM, Firewire 800 port and SD Card slot.
Someone comments that
aiqw left out the aluminum casing (the presumption being it costs more). Note that at this point, nobody, even aiqw, has shown any hint of a secret passion for materials science.
Some people prefer the look and feel of the white MacBook's(which also have a unibody enclosure) so I didn't really think it was worth mentioning.
aiqw is talking sense here, in my opinion.
Just because some people prefer the plastic material to the aluminum doesn't change the differences in cost of manufacturing.
Educated guess? Uneducated shot in the dark? To be fair, the argument has yet to explode, but this is the beginning of the thread taking an argumentative tone.
I'm sure it costs a fortune for Apple to use the same material cans are made out of.
Followed by a still playful tone of sarcasm. Still, neither poster has begun to pretend to be informed yet.
I'm not even sure how to respond to this ridiculous statement. Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about.
Again, at this point, to me at least, it's not as though
miles had any clue either. But you get the picture. This is how the argument started.
And here is how I hope it ends, with the "proof" that
aiqw (and others, maybe, I didn't read the whole darn thread) have been demanding, before I decided to play games on aiqw.
By simply google searching, we find the following:
Live notes from Apple's Q408 Conference Call:
Oppenheimer: Aluminum unibody enclosures for MacBook family will initially have higher costs; volume will bring down the cost to Apple over time."
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/18839/
Now, this is a digest version. I found a (presumed accurate) transcript:
Oppenheimer:
"...The level of quality these products deliver to customers is mind-blowing for their price points. The unibody precision aluminum enclosures would normally cost hundreds of dollars by themselves."
Source:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/100980-apple-f4q08-qtr-end-9-27-08-earnings-call-transcript?page=4
Hundreds of dollars? Oppenheimer is probably using the term "normally" to mean "if it weren't for all sorts of technological advances that makes this dirt, or rather, plastic cheap, it could cost a lot more."
And on page 5:
Richard Gardner - Citigroup
Okay, thank you. And if I could follow-up, Peter, and maybe ask if you could give us a sense of how much of the gross margin outlook for the fourth quarter is related to the higher costs associated with the aluminum uni-body enclosures, and maybe some sense of how much more expensive that is then the way you were doing things previously?
Peter Oppenheimer
Well, the guidance that I provided, Rich, the sequential decline really is driven from the introductions of the notebooks and iPods, which we couldn’t be more excited about. And there’s many, many new technologies, new features in those besides the uni-body but that contributed.
As I said on the last call, we were going to introduce these products. They were initially going to have higher costs and through volume manufacturing and cost engineering, we’re going to work down, work to get down the cost curve over time. But we’ve made a big investment in these products and these are some of the best we’ve ever shipped.
Richard Gardner - Citigroup
Okay. Peter, could I ask one more -- and that is we have seen a 35% decline in aluminum pricing so far -- well, since you gave the guidance for fiscal ’09 gross margin, aluminum is down 35%. How quickly can we expect that to start flowing through the P&L? Thank you.
Peter Oppenheimer
We would certainly sell our new MacBooks cheaper if we just delivered them with a block of aluminum but we have to machine that aluminum and it’s a fairly precision operation, so the cost of the aluminum matters some but is not a dominant cost.
Richard Gardner - Citigroup
Okay. All right, thank you.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/100980-apple-f4q08-qtr-end-9-27-08-earnings-call-transcript?page=5
So, there you have it. At least when they adopted the technology, as most of us would intuitively think, the fancy aluminum uni-body process cost more than the extant plastic process. Of course, that was what Apple thought in 2008. Which costs more now? I dunno. I don't care. If you still want to pursue it, go ahead, and find a later conference call transcript. But a lot of you, given what you've been posting, are going to have to change your tune, to continue this stupid debate, because the above refutes a lot of what some of you have been saying.
Now, let sportguy, I've done my duty. I see that aiqw is still stumbling over English so I'm going to go help him out again.
