Apple's hold on metal chassis supply chain hinders competition

You're right. Apple have a video of the CNC process here: http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/design.html

They also use a laser cutter to do the speaker holes and the incredibly fine holes on the front that you only see when the light is on.

Thank you for digging up that quote. I was thinking after reading all the preceding comments that I'd have to go dig it up myself. Apple is on record as pouring billions of dollars into pre-paying for their suppliers to purchase incredibly expensive machines to produce apple products, so obviously apple ends up with priority access to the output: they made it possible!

Well, I am suspicious about an article that talks about lathes with regard to making Macbook parts. A Lathe is a machine on which parts are spun at great speed. It is good for making things like the legs of tables, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe

Apple's unibody technology uses CNC machines which are more appropriately called mills. They are not that uncommon, and are widely available to everybody... and have been for years. Maybe Apple uses machines from a particular segment of the market that has dried up supply, but it is rare that a company has too much demand for a product and isn't interested in building more.

EG: There's no evidence Apple has cornered the market on CNC machines, which can come from a wide variety of companies.

However, companies like Foxconn, do invest billions in buying large quantities of such tools and then dedicate them to manufacturing apple products, because Apple's specifications require them to do so. (This from an article I read interviewing Foxcon's founder.) The Band on the iPhone 4 required 1,000 custom metal machines, for instance. No doubt many of those billions invested in those machines come from Apple.

As a mental exercise, consider the thought process behind the perspective that this is "anti-competitive".

1. Apple has taken a technology- metal milling- that has existed for at least half a century, and used it to make a nicer laptop case.

2. Apple uses the modern manufacturing method to do this, requiring expensive CNC machines.

3. Apple introduced popular products that, when you open them, look like they were hand crafted by master metalworkers in the 1940s (I'm serious!) while their competition is still shipping cheap plastic cases.

4. Even though there are dozens of suppliers of CNC Mills of all type, Apple's requirements contain the market for a particular type (this is speculation on my, and the articles part.)

5. Therefore, this is "anti-competitive" because Apple's competition can't just copy the unibody case idea and order machines and make their own unibody cases?

6. So, what could possibly be the remedy? To fine Apple for being successful with an innovative new case design? To institute some government board of allocation to allocate the (currently, and only temporarily) limited supply of CNC machines?

If Apple hadn't been competitive-- that is, if Apple hadn't innovated and come up with a new case design-- there would be no demand for these machines from non-Apple people. So, this is a result of competition on Apple's part.

Sometimes I imagine that people think that if Apple is successful by doing something better, that this is "unfair" and that Apple should be punished.

Hell, I wish I could make a crapy video editor and then force Apple to give me some of their final cut profits, because, really, it is so unfair that apple makes such a good video editor, I'm just one guy and I can't hope to compete with that, right? (Just kidding, forcing Apple to do that is aggression, and is immoral. I'm just being illustrative. While I've thought about making a video editing app, I've not done that, actually.)

The name for lathe in the Scandinavian languages translates literally into English as turning-bench. It's hard to forget its purpose and meaning with a name like that.