“Windows-based PC makers looking to challenge Apple’s extremely successful line of ultra-lightweight MacBook Airs with designs based on Intel’s “Ultrabook” platform are losing hope that they’ll be able to do so and still turn a profit on sales of the notebooks any time this year,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider.
“Unveiled a couple of months ago at the Computex trade show, Intel’s new ‘Ultrabook’ design is a set of guidelines for PC notebook makers aimed at marrying the performance and capabilities of a traditional notebook with ‘tablet-like features’ in a ‘thin, light and elegant design,'” Jade reports. “A direct response to Apple’s hot-selling MacBook Airs, Intel says it plans to reach a 40 percent share of the consumer notebook market with the ‘no-compromise’ Ultrabook designs by the end of 2012. Its guidelines call for the systems to retail for less than $1000 and sport form-factors that are no more than 20mm thick.”
Jade reports, “The first Ultrabook notebooks were slated to arrive at that price point in time for the 2011 holiday shopping season but a new report reveals that ‘actual production costs’ to build the new notebooks are roughly as high as Apple’s MacBook Air retail prices, which could ‘render the hope [of matching the Air’s pricing] practically infeasible.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Doesn’t matter how thin you make ’em if they’re running Windoze.
And 20mm is almost 0.8″ of an inch – certainly not Air-like.
You’ve got that right!
Same thing with Android or Web OS.
Nothing beats a Mac…Nothing!
Oh my how the tables have turned. It’s the PC makers struggling now to compete on price. Don’t underestimate the value of Tim Cooke in all this. He’s a supply-side genius and no doubt has contributed to Apple being able to build quality products for cheaper than competitors at the same time squeezing supply for vital components. Apple chokes supply while PC makers choke their chickens
Gotta love it! Apple leads in innovation, quality, ease of use, style, and price!! It is good to be a Mac user…
Supply CHAIN
Supply side was a discredited voodoo economic theory from the 1980s.
It’s not discredited. It’s when we moved to Keynesian econmics that we run into the serious trouble we are noe.
1
One of the primary considerations for designing and manufacturing ultra thin notebooks is heat dissipation apart from power management which is achieved through a combination of underlying OS and the ULV – ultra low voltage – chip. Of course resorting to SSDs lowers the temperature profile as compared to a spinning hard drive. Apple has the aluminum milling process for the MacBook Air patented. Jonathan Ives has said that they are designing the MBA thinness down to molecular levels – any thinner and molecules will lose their tensile strength and bonding covalence.
Apple designs the whole widget so can tailor make the OS for TRIM support for the OEM SSD and monitor temperature control exactly for the MBA. Windows being a permissive OS suffers from having to accommodate every design profile and so lacks optimization for specific hardware data sets which Apple has compiled over several generations of MBA.
So. No fucking chance. Right?
Right
Balmer doesn’t have a middle leg. Did you see “Let the Right One In?” That’s what Ballmer has.
That’s why they need the Liquidmetal.
“Apple has the aluminum milling process for the MacBook Air patented. ”
What the heck can they patent about that? It’s just CNC machining from a solid billet of aluminum. Standard procedure. Applying it to computers is great — but is only a nuance of application – no more valid that saying the process to machine all the different types of pieces done by this procedure should all be individually patentable procedures — e.g. jet engine components, pieces for the Spacearm, medical instrumentation – and a million more.
You can patent a manufacturing method as surely as you can patent the product. Patents cover a wide range of inventions so if you have discovered a way to mill aluminum into a shape that provides resiliency and strength while minimizing weight your invention cannot be replicated in the exact same way you’ve achieved the result. In the same way you can patent pharmaceutical products which are after all formulations of chemicals added in the right proportions. Aircraft engine manufacturers have patented the design and manufacture of turbine blades, the internal honeycomb structure and airflow efficiency
@Seamus
The case is not machined in a conventional sense. Water jets are used to carve the case not drills. So it’s a bit different. Plus, Apple has reduce the number of parts.
Aluminum solid case is a key and when it came out most thought OK cool but what advantage ……
Well now we see how Apple’s superior design is killing the PC …..
When they came out with the 11″ Air I was first in line to get and I love ….. The 11″ has really added to the mix and then comes smaller …
OK iPad baby ……
Apple is holding a lot of high cards and hardly any low cards and we ain’t playing Omaha Low here sweetheart ……
… and the best of it is that Apple are making a pretty decent profit margin on them too.
All those people who claim that Apple’s products are overpriced will have a hard time explaining why nobody else can make a comparable product to MacBook air without charging more for it.
Just wait until Apple start using Liquid Metal in anger. Trust me, my fellow Macolytes, when I say you truly ain’t seen nothing yet!
=:~)
How ironical? Cheap imitator cannot even make ripoff Macbook Air cheap. Other than cover their manufacturing cost of also-run, what is the profit? Why bother, Dell, HP, Acer, Levano? Go and get a rope, and hung yourself.
Dell was going to make their UltraBooks out of two used aluminum TV dinner trays. They were a little disappointed when they found out the darn things are made out of cheap, cheesy plastic nowadays. They’re still gonna use them, but they are really disappointed.
The rest of the tech world, struggling to match what Apple did last year… and failing.
In this case, the key difference is obvious. Apple is the only one NOT dependent on Microsoft. And even if the competition manages to match the hardware design and pricing (unlikely), their products will still be running Windows.
Ballmers Left and Right Nut LOL is right. What’s goin to be worse for those cloners is when Apple releases the new MacBook Pto 15-17 that’s nearly as thin as the MBA. That’s what I want!
The problem is you can still get an up or other branded laptop with core i5 and 4th ram for $500. Granted it’s running win doze but still. I hear people say all the time I want a Mac but I can’t afford 1500 when I can get something that will do for 500.
Apple needs to make a laptop ipin a 15in in the price of a 13 MacBook. Just for those who want bigger screen but don’t need the higher specs of the current mbpro.
Thin is great, but I’d rather have a cool case. I’m still waiting for the day I no longer need to use my Xpad with my MBP.
” new report reveals that ‘actual production costs’ to build the new notebooks are roughly as high as Apple’s MacBook Air retail prices, which could ‘render the hope [of matching the Air’s pricing] practically infeasible.’”
I will buy MacBook Air at retail and you can put your OS and Logo on it.
Whoops, Macs have no CMOS with a standard boot bios that is needed by Windows and Linux.
Apple’s boot EFI is a totally different animal.
It’s not fair to compare all ‘ultrabooks’ to the MacBook Air. The Air is full of cost compromises like low range processors/RAM and half bandwidth Thunderbolt controllers.
The Sony Vaio Z is more like a Air with the specs of a Pro, not the same thing.