“In line with the latest launch of Apple Computer’s Intel Core Duo-based MacBook, Asustek Computer has camped out its design team specializing in Apple products at the company’s manufacturing facilities in Suzhou in preparation for volume production, according to sources at Taiwan notebook makers. Apple released the detail specifications regarding the long-anticipated MacBook on its website and the company is taking online orders. Volume shipments are expected to start in June and Apple’s production partner, Asustek, is fully prepared for production,” Celia Lin and Esther Lam report for DigiTimes. The sources noted that the design team of Asustek has been sent to Asusalpha Computer, the China subsidiary of Asustek, to make sure mass production proceeds smoothly.”
More in the full article here.
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Lets say they FOUND something in the production process that was an issue. How would having the Apple design team there help? I mean, don’t they really need the production engineers?
Seems to me that the designers figure out what they want the laptop to do and look like and the engineers figure out how to make the hinge or magnet or whatever work correctly. By the time it hits mass production, needing to go back to design seems like a LONG process!
Good point, perhaps since it said “Asustek Computer has camped out its design team” (not Apple design team it is the actual design for production process.
Will they be able to fix the blast furnace effect on the new MacBooks like they did for the Pro version after they said it wasn’t a problem but really was? Typical Apple/Jobs arrogance.
As someone who worked in the early ‘90s for a company that made hardware for Apple, this is not really news. Apple controls supplier quality in many ways, and one of them is having Apple product managers on site regularly. Snap inspections, unannounced visits, and regular “bricks and bouquets” meeting at Cupertino, were the order of the day (at “b & b” meetings, they threw flowers if you’d been performing well and bricks if not…). From a supplier point of view their attention to detail was fanatical, but it shows in the quality of the finished products. That an Apple team is camping at a supplier is not news, it’s simply how they do business and it’s a good thing it’s still going on.
I guess the story is referring to production engineers.
Brian Allen
“Apple team camps at Asustek factory. . .”
And late at night they sit around the campfire and tell ghost stories and make s’mores. Beware the killer bug known as
01010011 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101111
01100110 00100000 01000011 01101100 01100001
01110010 01110101 01110011 00101100 00100000
01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000101 01110110 01101001 01101100 00100000 01000100
01101111 01100111 01100011 01101111 01110111
MW: history, just ask Tom.
Apple’s discussion forums are FULL of reports of noises coming out of the much touted new MacBooks.
Apple will never learn as long as we keep hurrying in to buy their stuff not yet ready for distribution.
Buyer beware!
Wow! These guys are like rock stars now. Media tracking their every move.
Even when there is no story, there is.
MDN Magic Word: “type” O.K.
Please, MDN, fix your headline!
It’s misleading, and you’ve got people thinking there an Apple Computer team at Asustek, when in fact it’s just an “Asustek’s team specializing in Apple products.”
Quite. I thought from the headline that Jonathan Ives and team were living in tents at Asustek.
Asus. The same PC computers that you all love to hate. Shlep an Apple logo on there and add a hundred bucks on.
They should supply white headphones with each model to mask the noises from the hardware.
Is everyone comfortable w/ China making our computers? Horrible human rights record and they’re not exactly a friend to the U.S. politically..
China — Not exactly the bastion of Trustworthiness
<a> href=”http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-05-18T170007Z_01_PEK366936_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-USA-COMPUTER.xml&src=rss&rpc=22l”>NEW LINK</a>
DAMMIT
It’s called TEAMWORK…
Nothing wrong with that.
And Apple’s thermal paste swat team blazes into action! Oooh, maybe there was a better word to use…
“Son of Clarus, the Evil Dogcow”….very funny ampar
Considering the MacBook Pro’s quality ranks right down there with Dell’s they better.
Thanks, Ironman! (one of my favorite Black Sabbath songs)
I’m trying to figure out how all the sabre-rattling between Taiwan and China fits in with the fact that there are Taiwan companies with China subsidiaries. And vice versa I suppose? And Apple deals with both?
its checking for build quality you knobs.
the design team are more stringent on the build standards than would be the engineers. its the details, the mold casting etc.