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February 23, 2008

intel_macs

The mystery of the MacBook Air and the extra screws

Posted Feb. 23, ’08, 11:00 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Hardware » Intel Macs

The Nikkei Electronics Teardown Squad (which, apparently, is an entire squad dedicated just to tearing down gadgets) teamed up with some Japanese PC manufacturers and got their hands on a MacBook Air and, surprise surprise, tore it down.

After having a look at how the internal structure of the notebook was held together, they came to a disappointing conclusion. The Air, we now know, uses far too many screws for its own good. And that, my dear friends, solves the mystery of why the thing is so darned expensive. It’s the screws. Why didn’t we think of that!

Terming the design as “wasteful”, they stated that instead of focusing on the workmanship of the internal design—Apple, surprisingly enough, chose to lay emphasis on the areas “where its expertise lies, such as external appearance, software and user interfaces”.

Really? Oh, who could have thought that Apple would be so naive? How can a company like Apple, which has been in this industry for more than thirty years, make the erroneous decision to capitalize on its best talents? That’s just plain stupid.

I can’t help but be dismissive of this story. The Japanese PC makers in question allege that there isn’t anything technically superior about the design of the MacBook Air and that they “can make the same computer at a lower cost”. Well then, why don’t you? Why don’t we see sexy 0.76 inch thin notebooks running on 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo processors from other companies?

I’m no expert and the internal design of computers is the last thing I want to comment on, but I believe that one should put their money where their mouth is. Unless we see some real MacBook Air competitors out there at prices significantly lower than it, I’m going to pretend that the MacBook Air is the most beautiful computer in the world, inside and out—the Nikkei Electronics Teardown Squad’s opinion notwithstanding.

But that may well be just one man’s opinion. What say you, dear readers?


18 Comments

Cyrus said:

Who cares about the number of darned screws in a piece of art. Yes, I see the Macbook Air as an Art and as such, I don't care much about how it came about to being such a thing of beauty and function. Besides why would one want to open it up anyway when it simply works out of the box?
Aayush, I completely agree with you... until I see other competitor making similar products as the "Air", I don't give a hoot!

February 23, 2008 11:13 AM
Bob Doherty said:

This type of "analysis" is a bad sign for the Japanese. It reminds me of us in the U.S.A. bad mouthing their cars in the 70's, and look what happened.

February 23, 2008 11:22 AM
Marcus Daniel said:

I think the MacBook Air has got to have lots of screws precisely because it is so thin. I am thinking it being so thin requires it to have a high degree of rigidity, the screws make sure there is not any twisting and bending going on when weight and forces are applied to it from outside. I do not believe Apple would put a single thing in there without some good reasons for it. So therefore I am also dismissive of this report. Plus screws are great, you can take it apart to start with. Macs are not one way glued and soldered hardware that you can throw into the trash if something breaks down. GO Apple.

February 23, 2008 11:24 AM
Anonymous said:

Cheap is not the only variable. Perhaps they could build it cheaper, but would it feel as solid or last as long?

February 23, 2008 11:37 AM
Ryu said:

Same opinions here. I had a similar post condemning their comments on my site done yesterday actually. Haha.

February 23, 2008 11:51 AM
Anonymous said:

screws??? Superglue would be cheaper and lighter. lol

February 23, 2008 12:45 PM
Erik said:

As with a lot of the criticism that Apple receives in response to their products, this brings to mind the origins of the term 'Columbi Egg'.

When Christopher Columbus returned to Europe after sailing to America, a lot of people were envious of the attention he received.

Their main criticism of him was that anyone could have sailed across the Atlantic and claimed the land.

In response one such group of critics, Columbus challenged them to stand a hard boiled egg on its end.

The men accepted the challenge, and attempted to make the egg balance.

None of them succeeded. After the last of them had given up, they demanded to know how Columbus would have solve the challenge.

Columbus pressed the egg against the table with enough force to crush the 'bottom' of the egg. This allowed the egg to stand.

The critics were outraged at this, and claimed that any one of them could have done this.

Columbus agreed that they could have.

The difference is that he did it.

February 23, 2008 12:45 PM
David J. Matthews said:

No doubt they can make the same computer at a lower cost, now that they have the perfect Blue Print right in front of them. My quess is that, once they took the Macbook Air apart they were able to say " Why didn't I think of that". And I agree 100 percent with you. If you can make the same PC and cheaper do so, don't go shooting off your mouth. Talk is cheap.

February 23, 2008 1:04 PM
CVBruce said:

I have never met an engineer that upon looking at a design, couldn't come up with a way to modify the design to make it "better".

We don't know what constraints the apple engineers were under to come up with the Mac Air, so it is no surprise that after the fact, others can come up with the way they could have done better. In this country it's called Monday Morning Quarterbacking.

February 23, 2008 1:26 PM
pietro watanabe said:

I like screws. This means you can breakdown a product and replace components without breaking plastic holding tabs or other non-removable fastenings. Those Japanese engineers, who are so fond of eliminating screws would design a snap-together assembly, with no regard to problems it creates in disassembly. This is okay for cheap throwaway products , but not okay for an expensive laptop.

February 23, 2008 2:15 PM
Dave-O said:

Were they expecting TARDIS technology? Of course they can build the same machine, once they convince Intel to reduce the package size by 60%.

February 23, 2008 3:28 PM
Heart_Man_2000 said:

I've got to tell you, if a tear down crew disassembled a MacBook Air, and the only thing they thought was wrong was too many screws,it must be a damn good product. Complaining about too many screws? Don't they have anything better to do? Pretty sad....

February 23, 2008 5:01 PM
Sandman619 said:

Certainly Intel would have eagerly charged less for a custom built CPU, one that they thought was impossible to design had it not been for Apple's encouragement, for these low-end PC makers. They are well known for their custom designs, unlike Apple which sticks to buying off-the-shelf components

Cheers!

February 23, 2008 5:01 PM
Colorado Bill Author Profile Page said:

I agree.

The first rule in engineering a high quality product is to make it work; then you see what you can do to make it work, cheaper.

Apple has a long history of engineering for cost-effective manufacturing.

If Apple's engineers went to the trouble of specifying 30 (hidden) screws, the FIRST question a competent engineer should be asking is "why?"

It would appear that these Monday-morning quarterbacks are incapable of asking this question, let alone answering it.

February 23, 2008 6:25 PM
krye said:

Here's my response to NIkkei: What-ever!

February 23, 2008 9:06 PM
Peter Y said:

Forget the screws. Why pay so much for a work of art with less functionality? But if you must, add the extra screw mystery to others that Apple has created. For example, why doesn't Apple tell people that the Black Macbook out-performs its White twin? Or that some programs need the graphics capability of the Macbook Pro to work? I guess it must be the extra screws.

February 25, 2008 5:06 AM
Anonymous said:

Technology Review had a good article on this, (http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18621/) it basically said that computer companies take their cues from the factory, which is why all PCs are so flimsy and poorly designed. Apple on the other hand, works hand in hand with the factory to build products to their own specs, which is why Apple design is so widely praised.

CVBruce said it right: Monday Morning Quarterbacking. But there's a deeper point to make here. The Air is version 1.0. Subsequent versions will be better and cheaper. Four years from now, the Teardown Squad will open up a MacBook Air and say, "This is perfect!"

February 29, 2008 10:34 AM
Earle said:

The report sounds like sour grapes, to me. I wonder if someone's factory lost their bid to contract with Apple (or got the boot from Apple) for the kind of ad-hoc engineering "improvements" they suggest. They routinely make changes to design on their customers' products??? They say it looks like the MBA was made exactly to Apple specificatins, without changes. Well DUH! Apple is known for prohibiting their partners from even talking about upcoming products. And somebody thinks Apple is going to allow their elegant designs to be changed on the production floor? NO WAY!

So there were some extra screws. I don't hear the tear-down team talking about how unique the battery is, or how Apple managed to squeeze everything into such a beautiful form-factor. But of course, these "engineers" aren't really true engineers, they're mechanical, screw-counting misfits! It's no secret that they can make stuff CHEAPER.

March 2, 2008 6:14 PM

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