02/22/2008, 12:05pm, EST
Friday, February 22nd
MacBook Air build inefficient, say Japanese engineers
Japanese engineers from the Nikkei Electronics Teardown Squad judge the MacBook Air as being wasted space inside its otherwise efficiently designed chassis. According to TechOn the engineers claim the ultra-portable uses entirely too many screws to secure various pieces, counting over 30 to secure the keyboard, for example. The engineers say that they could produce the same computer with fewer screws, and a resulting lower cost.
"If I proposed such a design, our company would never approve it," said one of the engineers. "When it comes to Japanese PC manufacturers, their manufacturing plants will complain or add their own technical efforts to lower cost, if a proposed structural design was insufficient. The MacBook Air gives me an impression that its manufacturing plant packaged the computer exactly as ordered by Apple."
The engineers also note that some of the parts appear to be crafted with cutting techniques, rather than simply just being molded. They noticed the issue when examining both the top case and the screen hinges.
While not covered by the Nikkei ETS, a large concern for MacBook Air owners is that of the integrated battery. The battery itself costs no more than those for a MacBook Pro, but for the installation to take place, the laptop must be sent back to Apple, or taken to an Apple store. The swap, fortunately, is free of charge, according to CNN Money. Canadian and international Air owners can also have a swap done in any Apple Authorized Service Provider.
Filed under: industry, Apple
Other story tags: MacBook Air, japan, teardown, inefficient, Engineers
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"The MacBook Air's mysterious internal design might be a violent antithesis against Japanese manufacturing, which allows no compromise even in detailed parts of the hardware."
Please, get over yourselves.
I should have kept the Japanese manufactured items I had a few years back, which were literally made out of recycled food cans, obvious from where they hadn't even bothered to remove the painted label from the parts invisible during normal use.
If you're using parts from a previous model design, it's simpler and faster to adjust to work with the new design than to start from scratch. When you're launching a new product, especially a niche one like this, you wouldn't want to devote manufacturing resources to more expensive custom fabrication processes for just this one unit.
Personally, I'd prefer a slightly less efficient design at a lower cost than the more expensive, dicey investment of customized fabrication and throttling the factory to full tilt up front.
Apple surely are evil for being so careless.
LOL