“The MacBook Brick is a block of high-quality, aircraft grade aluminum,” Seth Weintraub reports for 9 to 5 Mac.
“It is the beginning of the new Apple manufacturing process to make MacBooks,” Weintraub reports.
“It is totally revolutionary, a game changer,” Weintraub reports. “One of the biggest Apple innovations in a decade.”
“The MacBook manufacturing process up to this point has been outsourced to Chinese or Taiwanese manufacturers like Foxconn. Now Apple is in charge,” Weintraub reports. “The company has spent the last few years building an entirely new manufacturing process that uses lasers and jets of water to carve the MacBooks out of a brick of aluminum.”
Weintraub reports, “As [Apple CFO] Peter Oppenheimer said at the recent earnings call, this innovation is something ‘Apple’s competitors won’t be able to match’ for some time to come.”
More in the full article here.
This sounds promising, but could someone please explain the benefit of this that I don’t see?
Sounds mighty expensive is a world with a lot of pressure on margins. I would say, not a chance!
@Excited…
I would guess it has to do with building a more durable metal casing?
Unless the innards slide out on some sort of a tray, how would you get inside to upgrade or repair it?
I can see the environmental benefits of this manufacturing process.
Because your working with slab material, all the tiny parts cut out can be re-aggregated into a new slab. Rather than wasting parts.
I feel the rumble…. I’m hoping they call it the “iBook 2nd Generation”
the iBook has such a Eve and Walle feel to it…. ok I’m going crazy now.
Does this mean Apple has a manufacturing plant now??
Maybe the cost of outsourcing will leverage the cost of the technology that they are going to use???
They already use injection molding for the metal now… does this really change things that much? I don’t know why it would but I guess it’s a big step, I’d love to know why it’s so monumental…
Pi
Hey MDN guys,
This article has already been up for at least 24 hours if not more. I thought you were more on top of things than this…
Me thinks this article is a gag fellas.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
I have two conflicting issues with this. One for and one against:
1) Processing time would be greatly increased. This processing would not be able to support high volume productions.
2) Carved aluminum would create more effective spacial usage. Plus, heat dissipation would be greater with a more solid piece of metal.
This would also allow for much thinner laptops than before with much more strength built in. You aren’t bending the metal so it would be stronger, plus, you can shape the case to allow for custom internal components.
Gaga!
Too cost prohibitive. Just take sheet aluminum and stamp it. More cost effective. That would help keep the cost down during a crappy economy.
Its good to know that theres a stronger casing. Just as Lenovo advertised that it has airbag to protect the HD and water protection….BUT, it does not cover them if that is what causes the computer to malfunction. Same deal with macs, you drop it, you’ll pay for it.
> It is totally revolutionary, a game changer,” Weintraub reports. “One of the biggest Apple innovations in a decade.”
Wowsers. I have a shower door that’s aluminum. But then of course whatever Apple does is “innovative.”
Nonsense! Milling an aluminum billet, not a brick, with a laser or water is just not cost effective. It’s not structurally any better, it’s not aesthetically any better, AND it’s NOT cheaper. Weintraub is a doofus.
“The company has spent the last few years building an entirely new manufacturing process that uses lasers…”
What about sharks?
wow, it is incredible the way people think….
maybe, just maybe, Apple has made it cost effective.
not structurally better? every stamp twist bend and shape puts micro stresses and tears into the material. this would stop 100% of those. you could (in theory) make much thinner and lighter cases, and yet they would be even stronger.
not aesthetically better? they wouldn’t be limited by assembly or joints or screws, and could instead make (again in theory) even more pure clean lines.
i don’t know if this is true, but if it is, it is Apple doing it, so it won’t be half-assed. they could move the entire line in time. iPods, notebooks, iMacs, everything. if they are doing it on that scale, and if they patent it right, they could build products the competition only dreams of, and maybe, just maybe, for less than build them now.
i swear, some of you don’t even think before posting……
Sharks with Frikin’ laser beams on top of their heads? Instead we get ill-tempered sea bass! Jeez, what is the world coming to?
“This sounds promising, but could someone please explain the benefit of this that I don’t see?”
Read Article
Sort of like what the guys on OCC have been using to build custom motorcycles for over a year? High-end fab? Interesting. I guess. But far from “new”, except, perhaps, in the low-end laptop business.
Stamped sheet-metal costs considerably less than carved, in terms of time, coin and waste material. Roll it flat, bend it curved, done. This carving jazz is a bit expensive – and to no great benefit – even for the MBP. The marginal benefits at a significant cost might – just maybe – fit in the MBA profile.
People are pissed and bitter about their stocks; this is pretty friggin’ amazing… IF true.
If there had been structural strength issues with Macbooks – there hasnt.
If it was cheaper to mill a billet than stamp press – it isnt.
If Apple had built their own manufacturing unit – they havent.
This MIGHT work with some weird niche product – but Apple dont make weird niche products, they make mass-produced and big selling products.
Verdict – complete bollocks.
they just say that to raise the stock price….
This IS a rumor.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smirk” style=”border:0;” />
If true, I’m sure it’s patented out the wazoo…
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”shut eye” style=”border:0;” />
Mr. ‘Excited and confused’:
1. Wait. This is a -rumor- and not fact.
2. Ignore the utterly ignorant comments posted on MDN.
This sounds interesting, and I could imagine that it could provide some nice advanteages for apple since their products are often shapes that are hard to stamp out / manufacture.
That being said… if this where true, I would expect that we would have heard of Apple buying a facility where they can manufacture things, right? If they were going to do this in the US, I’m sure they would want to take advantage of all tax breaks they could get if they let it out that they were looking for a manufacturing location.
9 to 5 Mac has a pretty amazing track record. If they’re saying it with this much confidence, I believe them 100%.
This rumor originated on some small-time blog and just kind of spread to other sites, including MacRumors. MDN is just another one picking up on it, and a bit late, I might add.
That said, I call BS on this whole thing. We’ll know more in a week.
The cost of a MacBook [Pro] has little to do with the case, which is sturdy enough and is probably a fraction of the cost (a new case, retail, is about $50 — I’d imagine Apple pays much less). The MBP is probably a lot more (retail is close to $500 for the case), but still, bigger cost savings could be had by finding a better battery technology, using OLED vs LCD (which would also reduce power consumption), integrating more chips (e.g., NVIDIA’s new chipset), finding cheaper ways to make flash, etc.
Considering they just bought PA Semi, I think that this factors into this somehow, since whatever they’re using PA for, they can integrate that technology at cost. CPU’s still from Intel, but perhaps they’re making their own North and South bridges. Perhaps they’re solving one of the biggest performance problems since moving away from the PowerPC – hard drive.
The particular chip PA had made, while based on the Power architecture, was for embedded applications – and included PCI-e, 10GbE ethernet, storage with integrated iSCSI and RAID, etc. This could serve many roles then, accelerating and offloading network and storage to this processor. This would work well for Apple, since they have a huge repertoire of PowerPC code to work with that will seamlessly integrate with OS-X.
The whole chip, including two 2GHz processor cores and all supporting I/O consumed at most 13W of power. The GM965+82801HM chipset take about 16W with the newer 1333MT/s chips taking a few more watts. This seems like a winning proposition to me.
“The first PWRficient chip-the PA6T-1682M-which dissipates just 5-13 watts, depending upon the application, is a dual-core implementation running at 2GHz with two DDR2 memory controllers, 2MB of L2 cache, and a flexible I/O subsystem that supports eight PCI Express controllers, two 10 Gigabit Ethernet XAUI controllers, and four Gigabit Ethernet SGMII controllers sharing 24 serdes lanes. Single-core and quad-core versions are due in early and late 2007, respectively, with an eight-core version planned for 2008.” — http://web.archive.org/web/20061016142012/www.pasemi.com/processors/index.html
The “brick” motif is thus sound – they’re building their own building blocks for their computers.
As an after thought – this would also have the side effect of rendering future versions of OS-X largely incompatible with generic PC components.
It also fits in nicely with OpenCL and Rosetta, being able to supplement the first and replace the second. For OpenCL, you would now have two-eight x86 cores @ ~4GHz, two-eight PowerPC cores @ ~2GHz, as well as the GPGPU – probably a Mobility HD 4600 with 512MB GDDR3 (about 500 GFLOPS).
AMD has plans for a mobility 4850 X2 as well, granting laptop users two GPGPUs and about 2 TFLOPS. Makes sense with something like OpenCL — even if the game only uses on core via OpenGL, the second one can be used for AI, physics, etc.
Wouldn’t it be nice? A real supercomputer for your lap.
Now that would be hard to beat.
I think the Brick will be made of industrial strength concrete.
This is not a rumor, it’s a fairy tale.
Not that there’s anything wrong with fairies.
I love fairy tails.
Nice to hear it’s possible for a new notebook design, but I was hoping on a redesigned Mac Mini as well.
One reason why I’ve yet haven’t upgraded my Ol’ Reliable 12-inch iBook G4 1.2 Hz is because it just looks too similar to the current White MacBook. I know the MacBook is widescreen, & thinner but overall it looks too similar.
I like the Black MacBook but I don’t like you have to pay $300 more to get it. They should of made a Black option with base model specs. Oh well, I hope it’s an across the lineup Aluminum casing to match the iMac.
And what is the big benefit as an end-user? Why should I care for such ‘revolutionary’ enclosure?
IF TRUE, SIGN ME UP FOR ONE!
Milling billet aluminum to carve out a laptop chassis does not sound feasible from a time/cost standpoint. As has been pointed out, stamping is much quicker/cheaper. But stamping has some disadvantages, too, such as dimensional tolerances and ability to form fine/complex details.
Casting seems like a more viable alternative than pure milling. Near net casting with a final machining pass to clean things up and add details, threading, etc. is a possibility. I seem to recall coming across a magnesium electronics chassis manufactured using this type of process. But I would think that the cost would be prohibitive, particularly for a consumer-level laptop. Perhaps this is why Apple’s gross margin will take a hit? Sounds unlikely to me…
The potential benefits are reduced parts count and improved rigidity thermal dissipation.
@Jane Chingo
Have you not seen how apple makes things… and then people try to copy it? I’d think that would mean they are innovative designing their own cool things and everyone else playing catchup. ex. samsung, blackberry, new sony “imac” desktop along with their keyboard too, etc. The list goes on.
Typical production facilities using stamping processes that incur initial costs in creating new dies for each new model. This type of manufacturing also has the additional burden of dealing with tool and die maintenance and the staff required.
I have a bit of familiarity with this because my father worked tool and die repair at a GM plant. He was one of only three who did that kind of work. One man for each shift because they there mostly for “insurance” as the only time they actually worked was when a line stopped for a die repair. They made really good money and most of the time they played cards with the guards and janitorial staff.
Milling billets would completely remove those costs.
Whether or not that would be cheaper remains to be seen. New milling processes using new technology could make it so.
milling a computer case out of a solid block of material would be the most wastful, energy intensive, slowest, environmentally irresponsible, and expensive way to go about it. It would be like milling a car body out of a single piece of steel – you could, but you wouldn’t.
From a structural viewpoint, a cast or milled case would be weaker than one made out of pressed sheet (which has been rolled), because of the difference in grain structure in the metal.
“Throw a little hot rod red in there.”
Iron MacBook.
What if it’s a 1-piece notebook-sized tablet. Sort of like an iPhone on steroids — no hinged display, no keyboard, just a slab of aluminum with a beautiful, full-sized glass multi-touch display. Imagine the current aluminum iMac but made of solid aluminum.
It has a virtual keyboard so there’s no need to machine extra pockets for a physical keyboard. Of course, it has USB and Bluetooth, so feel free to use your external input devices as you wish.
You machine openings on the sides for ports, connectors, maybe a DVD drive, etc. Everything mounts inside the case from the main front cutout, underneath the big glass display.
Maybe there’s a dock, so that you can use it as your main computer/display in a desktop environment. But when you’re on the go, you pick it up and off you go. Big, beautiful multi-touch screen, desktop processing power, lighter than a laptop.
Wowser.
Maybe something like this.
Guys, I’m putting my life at risk for this, but here’s the real story behind “Brick”. It’s just a code name to throw everyone off. The truth is that Apple has built a top secret factory disguised inside an old woolen mill in Scotland that is highly eco-friendly. Powered by a water wheel, the new MacBooks are going to be re-named McBoooks, and be covered with Scottish tartan wool over a glass exterior made by the same people who make the bottles for scotch whisky. I am not making this up.
Sure, I’ve been knocking back shots of single malt all day, but trust me – after about 12 shots, I have all the truth on this rumor nailed. Anyway, the glass casing and wool exterior is completely recyclable, and the wool exterior keeps the computer inside warm, while making sure that you don’t feel the heat generated by the CPU, which I understand to be very fast. The best part is that you can pick which color and style of tartan or tweed you want, based on your family ancestry and clan.
Aye laddie, you’ll be wantin’ a matching kilt too.
The best part is that Apple can cut manufacturing costs by using a factory powered by a water wheel as well as flocks of sheep running on vast arrays of treadmills to generate power. By going backward, it’s a radical step forward.
Don’t believe me? Try this: Get a bottle of good Scottish single malt, knock back about 12 shots, and re-read what I said above. THEN you’ll believe me. And if you believe all this, then you’ll want to read anything from C|Net, John Dvorak and Sarah Lacey. After 12 shots of good Scottish single malt, they’ll start to make sense too.
Lads, I’ll be agreein’ with the fine fellow above. At least with the part about the 12 shots of single malt.
If you’re fortunate, ye’ll be drinkin’ The Macallan, the fienest single-malt whisky in the world.
http://www.themacallan.com/