If the general public thinks that video is amazing, then perhaps the general public has no idea how advanced the manufacturing sector really is.
I doubt anybody would know how advanced every sector is. Innovation has been increasing at a pretty dramatic pace over the last 100 years.
I feel this is likely. I know of no-other company that regularly releases videos (or marketing material) of how its products are made.
but the point here is, i think, that the vast majority of people (including myself) take it for granted. we don't really care about how the iphone's made but when we have the chance to actually see automated manufacturing we are (or at least i am) completely amazed by what we as humans are able to do with materials coming out of bricks of stone from below earth surface. i'm amazed that people invent machinery so acurate and precise creating clear, polished surfaces for the end product. pressing metall into a desired form. creating glass to be bend and scratched like crazy.
i could stand at a production line and watch that stuff all day.
In the period from 1984-89 I watched pick & place circuit board assembly, pick & place robotics, robotic polishers, robotic bead blasters and spray painters operate in local machine shops, automotive plants and electronics manufactures.
I've never worked in a shop that punched out cylinders, but I'm sure that the process they are using for punching out the cylinder from a block of aluminum is how beer cans get made.
It's not amazing.
"Most metal stampings go through one or two die tools to produce the final shape. With the Mac Pro though, the challenge is to produce a massive amount of plastic deformation without tearing, rippling or deforming the perfect cylindrical surface."
and, below the figure:
"The results of the first (of between 4 and 5) deep draw stamping operations. Notice how the Mac Pro part is nowhere near the final length."
As I'm sure you know, there's a big difference between a single-use aluminium can, which is both small and thin, and a large part like this, which has to have both structural stability, very high dimensional tolerances, and a good surface finish. That said, you obviously know more about this than I do, so maybe you can comment on the quotes from the article?