The Macbook "Brick" | Hacker News Reader

The Macbook "Brick"

9to5mac.com

43 pointsojbyrne40 comments

That article is a little garbled. What it seems to be saying is that Apple is going to CNC machine MacBook cases from a solid block instead of stamping (or maybe even hydroforming) them. This seems like an incomplete part of the story, since it would be near-impossible to CNC machine aluminum to the very thin dimensions they currently have with their stamped cases. It would also be very difficult to machine a block with the dimensions of a MacBook so that the innards are hollow, reducing the number of seams and fasteners. A great deal of scrap would be produced in the form of aluminum chips, which do not recycle well because the high surface area means there is a lot of aluminum oxide to deal with.

Water jets and laser cutters are in common usage and one or other has probably been used to cut the blanks or trim the finished case parts since the titanium powerbook. They are also excellent for parts like the bezel on the front of the MBP screen. They are not generally used to carve 3D shapes - that is done by a CNC mill, which resembles a big drill bit that can move in three dimensions if you haven't seen one. To stamp a MBP case would take seconds - CNC machining one from solid might keep a 7-figure machine occupied for several minutes. Water jets and lasers generally blow a hole right through whatever they are pointed at, limiting their usage to cutting flat sheets or trimming the edges from stamped parts.

If this article is true, I think we are more likely to see more elaborate internal bracing or complex case designs from Apple. The innards of a MBP are fairly prosaic and complex machining could be used to improve airflow and allow components to be packed closer together. Aluminum could also be strategically placed in more complex shapes to help conduct heat out of the case. But when you manufacture parts by the million, casting the parts then finish-machining them may be more efficient, since the need to tie up expensive machines is reduced. Perhaps this is a strategy to get out of the 'just like every other laptop but with OSX' trap and maintain their competitive advantage in 'design' now that their competitors are starting to lift their game.

Also, aircraft-grade aluminum doesn't really mean anything. There are many different grades with different purposes, many of which are in common use in all kinds of relatively mundane applications. No doubt the current MacBook Pros are made from 'aircraft grade aluminum', but coke cans probably are too.

It sounds like some juicy info has unfortunately been filtered through one or two levels of people who aren't familiar with machine tool jargon. It would be very interesting to hear more details.

If you want to play with these machines yourself, check out emachineshop.com - a cool startup if ever there was one.

http://emachineshop.com looks seriously cool. One of those ideas that you just assumed someone else had already done.

That's interesting about the relative recycling value of chips vs. blocks. Is it possible to keep the chips covered in coolant to prevent oxidation if it is known that the aluminum is going to be remelted?

I had a look and found this: http://www.ars-inc.com/ROI.htm Still, buying expensive aluminum billets and then turning ~99% of the material into chips as would happen with a case design similar to the current MBP wouldn't be very efficient.

Perhaps they are moving to case designs that are a combination of CNC machined parts and stamped pieces? I'm sure Apple's design team is a lot more imaginative than me. There are some CNC-looking parts in the current MBP like the bracket that fixes the HD in place.

But let's face facts. Steve will not rest until he is selling Cube shaped computers again. :)

A 12" x 12" x 1.5" block of aluminum costs more than $200.

Not a very efficient method of making a computer case. I think maybe the article might be missing a few details!

216 cubic inches, 0.098 lb/cu in, 21 pounds. Aluminum is running about $1/pound. That sounds like $20 to me. I think they can find room to bury that in the price tag. You could spend around $200 to buy a single 12"x12" plate from a metal retailer on line, but I think Apple would buy in volume.

Actual volume of a macbook is 123 cubic inches, so it is even less.

I suppose I could be wildly wrong about the price of whatever alloy they are using.

That looks like the current scrap price. Its at about $.80 at this very moment, down from a high of $1.10 earlier this year.

Pure alloys (not mixed and cast by melting scrap), even common ones like 6061 still seem to be $5-$10/pound even in large quantities. If you know of a way to get 61 or 52 for less than that we would greatly appreciate the tip.

The only way I can think of that this might possibly make economic sense is if they've figured out how to get the waste in the form of large cut-out chunks of metal, rather than chips that oxidize substantially, and can recycle it on site (presumably fairly straightforward, since all the scrap is known to be of the desired alloy composition already).

I just talked to an automotive manufacturer, ok, my brother. He is paying about $1.60 a pound for 6000 series aluminum extrusions. It was higher but is headed down.

I think the price works.

The above manufacturer counts on getting 80% of the source price back for their scrap. So you can imagine if apple rough mills the bricks to remove most of the material as chips and gets 80% of the rate for those pounds of chips, then uses their exotic processes for the final work they will generate more valuable scrap, cutting their end cost.

What about recycling? Apple doesn't use the entire mass in each computer. Most of it would be hollowed out and the scrap could be recycled.

I thought this article was going to be about my cofounder's MBP. It, too, has been nicknamed the Macbook Brick, but for a much different reason.

Why has it been, then?

Because it's been in and out of the Apple store ever since he bought it, and generally is about as functional as a brick.

I can painfully relate. One of my computers was called the Crapple (dual inherited from cripple and crap).

I've owned four Apple computers (ibook G3, ibook G4, imac G5, macbook), and despite skipping first revisions and treating my computers very well, every single one of them has had several minor defects and all my notebooks have broken completely within a 3 year time frame.

In my personal experience, Apple is a hardware bimbo - pretty but useless. I only come back for OS X, which is the nicest desktop 'nix. I wish apple were still apple computers, not apple media.

I'm waiting for the next mb/mbp's, but if anyone has tips for alternatives, I'd love to hear them.

Anecdotal evidence is not important. Quality control needs to be observed over a large sample size.

That's what I came here to post. Seeing as within my college I've observed no laptop breakdowns, I think that Apple's still doing a pretty damn good job with quality control within my frame of reference. Meanwhile, a friend's HP notebook has broken down twice in the last year.

Not saying that my point of view is any more accurate than yours, but... you can't use a single frame of reference and decide that it's the most accurate. Gruber wrote about this a little while ago: after TechCrunch wrote that Apple had slipped from a 96% customer satisfaction rate to something in the 80s. His point was that yes, Apple had slipped, but it was still by far at the absolute top of the chain.

I asked my question kind of expecting the answer, but here's my two cents anyway: I really don't think that your original comment, or this entire chain of comments, really added to the thread at all. I've noticed a thread of people who'll enter any Apple thread just to bash Apple, and I think it's slightly annoying. I don't think I've seen anything on the Linux side going the other way, though I've seen people doing it to Windows articles and that's an annoyance too. Considering how high quality HN is usually, can't we decide to give it a rest and only add things to threads when they're relevant?

Anecdotal evidence is very important when it concerns you - if you get cancer or your parachute happens to be the one that fails, the larger statistic is really not all that relevant, unless you're in a competition for "I got screwed in the most unlikely way in the world".

Secondly, even without a larger statistic, applying combinatorics, Markov chains, Bayesian inference can yield interesting insights, even if just for nerdy fun.

Lastly, by using "I can [...] relate" and "In my personal experience" I clearly signaled that I was merely making a personal statement. Cheers.

FWIW, I've got a pretty large sample of anecdotal evidence that agrees. I had 3 cofounders with MBPs, all purchased within a couple months. Only one has run with no problems. The other 3 (one bought a backup) have been in and out of the Apple store forever, though a lot of the problem was that the "geniuses" just weren't fixing them properly.

And I know a lot of other startups that run primarily on Macs, and it's not an uncommon occurrence at all. In fact, it's so prevalent that a lot of them keep a spare handy just in case.

Again, not a statistically relevant sample, but enough to convince me they're pretty flimsy in the hardware department.

3 is not large. if you admit it's not statistically relevant then it's irrational to be convinced of anything.

It's a lot more than 3. I mentioned other startups I know, and if I did a survey I could probably collect data on a couple hundred. Also it would be 4 just among my 3 cofounders, since one was bought as a replacement and then began having problems itself.

Nonetheless, there is very likely to be a substantial failure rate for anyone to observe of 3 out of 4 Macbooks having problems. While you can't get an accurate mean failure rate from that small of a sample, you could pin down ranges for a given certainty. I'm too lazy to figure out how to do the math to get a range for say, 75% certainty, but I guarantee it's high by industry standards.

Also, you could simply Google around. Mac fans everywhere seem to consider their notebooks highly unreliable. Again, anecdotes, and probably a weighted sample too. But from Apple's perspective, it might as well be data since people will perceive it as such.

An incredibly weighted sample. That's like searching for commentary on any default Linux distro. Negativity rises to the top, because it's more urgent and more entertaining.

Again: I'm running my MBP from college, and I'd say that probably half my floor runs Mac. I've been dubbed the techie, unfortunately, and I've been asked no questions regarding Mac bugs yet. The biggest problems people've been having is with using Word 2008 to print: apparently, it messes up the margins.

And, of course, from personal experience: the only error my Mac has had was when I attempted to install Windows XP. And that was admittedly disastrous, but my computer was entirely backed-up and the Geniuses got it fixed off-the-clock - pretty top-notch customer service. When I installed Vista it happened smoothly.

Again: my evidence is as anecdotal as yours. But I'm not using my evidence to say that Apple is perfect and does no wrong. I'm just pointing out that for every "brick" story somebody has, there are a dozen "Maclove" stories that people just aren't provoked to tell.

Very true. But, if you assumed Macs failed 10% of the time, and that to be a high rate for notebooks overall, a sample of a ten of which none failed would happen ~35% of the time.

A sample of which 3 out of 4 failed would be much more rare. Thus you can glean more information from a sample of 3/4 failures than a sample of 10 with no failures.

I don't remember my combinations well enough to figure out the exact numbers, so I may be a bit off, but you see what I'm saying.

You're saying, now, that it is statistically relevant.

And it's not. Because from the data I've looked at, 10% is a vastly high number. You can't make numbers up and call them statistically relevant. And you can't disregard the fact that 3 out of 4 could just as easily be the statistical anomaly.

However, the other comment I've made still stands. Can we all drop it? Nobody cares, nobody will prove anything either way. I like the MacBook Pro, love it, think it's the best machine I've ever used. You, Matt, don't. Neither of our opinions matter to the other person, and this entire thread was started pointlessly and seemingly with intent to inflame. Let's drop it and go argue our operating system of choice somewhere that invites actual DISCUSSION.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm simply saying a small sample of failures (assuming failures are significantly less likely than non) gives you more information than a large sample of non.

Statistics take into account any valid ways of getting more information. And they also take into account what we know about how to avoid making crap up. You need to either claim to have a statistically relevant amount of information, or to know nothing about overall failure rates of apple laptops.

I like 9to5Mac the best out of all the other rumor sites. They definitely have some good relationships with Apple employees since I've seen corp info (both real and fake) leak multiple times.

GO BACK TO VALLEYWAG

I might be a patsy for saying this, but you're not serious, are you? Valleywag has the highest ratio of noise to signal of any site that I've seen - with the exception of the other sites in the Gawker portfolio. I try to avoid that entire branch of blogs unless I've got good reason to, or unless I'm recommended one article in particular.

lol

And this is what it will look like being made: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=323877

For those who are being fooled into this nonsense, the "brick" is a new and smaller mac mini without dvd drive.

Shhh, I could get fired if they know I told you.

I was hoping the code name brick would refer to something you throw through windows to break them.

The first 21st century telepathically assisted alien technology computer factory is pretty good too though.

haha keep chasing the "high end" apple. you'd think losing 50% share price would shake some sense into you. let me summarize:

2008: COMPUTERS ARE DISPOSABLE

you need to start thinking about $399 laptops, not $3999 laptops

what do i or anyone else really care if the laptop case is designed to last a decade? i am going to be using this thing 24 months, not 24 years

apple's competitors would be stupid to chase this pointless luxury. users don't know and don't care about better cases

You are wrong. I generally buy a new laptop every 3 years. I tend to buy a bit up the curve and get 1.5 years where the beast is fast, one year where the beast is "adequate" and half a year where the beast is "slow". To me, it is not about performance in laptops. It is about keyboard stability, robustness and weight. I have a blindingly fast desktop-computer and my laptop is for when I am not at home or when I want to hack code in the recliner. I don't need prime performance for that.

i can safely say that you, seeking not performance but "keybaord stability" in a laptop, are a market of one. its so sad to see the fanbois try to justify their iSlavery, almost like a battered wife telling the judge she reaaaallyyyy stiiiill loooooves hiiiim.

I also look for a good keyboard in a laptop before I look at most other factors. This has kept me with Thinkpads until recently, and now I'm on a Fujitsu T2010.

The advice I consistently give people when buying laptops is: Remember that you can't change the hardware. If you hate a trackpad, you will be stuck with it. If you hate the keyboard: though luck. Too slow a CPU? oh god, no chance in hell you'll be able to change it.

I write code and analyze problems for a living. Hence, my need for a fast CPU is not that important as I spend most of the time in emacs and use languages that can compile fast. Do we happen to be a minority? Perhaps so. Had I been a media executive, then my priorities would probably not be on the keyboard at all but on how much RAM i could cram into the beast.

Apple is selling a brand as much as they are selling a laptop and an OS. Notice that the marketing focuses on what you can do with an apple mac. They know how much you are buying an identity for your money in addition to a computer. The Apple marketing is primary recruitment unit for the "fanbois" you mention because what they can do with the Macs matter to them.

If you look at Lenovo's sales pitches, you will see an entirely different focus as they are targeting a different user base.

And for the record:

  jlouis@succubus:~$ uname -a
  Linux succubus 2.6.27-4-generic #1 SMP Wed Sep 24 01:30:51 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

  jlouis@succubus:~$ dmesg | grep thinkpad_acpi | grep model
  [   26.622322] thinkpad_acpi: IBM ThinkPad X40, model 23716EG

Do you like coming into Apple threads and trolling? Because it's really got no purpose, especially on a site like this.

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