“Apple is the world’s foremost manufacturer of goods. At one time, this statement had to be caged and qualified with modifiers such as ‘consumer goods’ or ‘electronic goods,’ but last quarter, Apple shipped a Boeing 787’s weight worth of iPhones every 24 hours,” Greg Koenig writes for Atomic Delights. “When we add the rest of the product line to the mix, it becomes clear that Apple’s supply chain is one of the largest scale production organizations in the world.”
“Apple continues to operate with Willy Wonka levels of secrecy,” Koenig writes. “In the manufacturing world, we hear rumors of entire German CNC mill factories being built to supply Apple exclusively, or even occasionally hear that one of our supplier’s process experts has been ‘disappeared’ to move to Cupertino or Shenzhen. While we all are massively impressed with the scale of Apple’s operations, there is constant intrigue as to exactly how they pull it all off with the level of fit, finish and precision obvious to anyone who has examined their hardware.”
“One of the more interesting things one notes in the videos is that the internal structure of the gold Edition models seems to include a pocket feature not present on the Watch or Sport. It is hard to say if this exists to stiffen the Edition or if Apple is removing a bit of the dense gold alloy in order to reduce the weight of these models,” Koenig writes. “There have also been rumors of a 6 pin port hidden under the top strap lug channel, used for burn in and diagnostics. It remains to be seen if this port will exist on the shipping Watches, or if Apple will delete these ports on production units. In the Aluminum video, we see finished Sport watches laid out with the ports clearly shown, but it is just as likely that these videos were shot months ago during production line setup with prototype watches.”
“I do have a theory that the port may remain on the Sport models because I suspect the ‘movement’ on the Sport is installed in the case permanently with adhesive. As such, it stands to reason Apple might maintain a diagnostics capability to troubleshoot issues at the Apple Store before simply trashing the defective unit and handing the customer a new one. With the Watch and Edition lines, it would make more sense to simply pull the movement out and replace it.”
“Apple could very easily have forgone forging to create stainless steel cases, just like everyone else. Hardening gold alloy with cold working could have been eliminated, putting them on par with the rest of the industry. Nobody will see or feel the inside pocket for the microphone on the Sport, yet it has been laser finished to perfection,” Koenig writes. “I see these videos and I see a process that could only have been created by a team looking to execute on a level far beyond what was necessary or what will be noticed.”
Much, much more – metallurgy, excellent illustrative images, and many other insights – in the full, highly recommended article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The insides of your non-Apple PC, your non-Apple cellphone, and your non-Apple tablet all look like crap. If you don’t understand why that’s important, you deserve to be stuck using those things until you figure it out.
You’re asking, where does aesthetic judgment come from? With many things—high-performance automobiles, for example—the aesthetic comes right from the function, and I suppose electronics is no different. But I’ve also found that the best companies pay attention to aesthetics. They take the extra time to lay out grids and proportion things appropriately, and it seems to pay off for them. I mean, beyond the functional benefits, the aesthetic communicates something about how they think of themselves, their sense of discipline in engineering, how they run their company, stuff like that. — Steve Jobs
I think the same philosophy that drives the product has to drive everything else if you want to have a great company. Manufacturing, for example, […] demands just as much thought and strategy as the product. If you don’t pay attention to your manufacturing, it will limit the kind of product you can build and engineer. Some companies view manufacturing as a necessary evil, and some view it as something more neutral. But we view it instead as a tremendous opportunity to gain a competitive advantage. — Steve Jobs
We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through. — Steve Jobs
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Chris” for the heads up.]