I'm sure some bits are contracted. No one company is capable of everything these days. In addition, any company will be using the designs of others in components. Nobody makes their own WiFi or Bluetooth chips, Broadcomm makes the ones for Macs. Apple designs how they all go together. Although I did hear they got a lot of Intel help for the first Mac Pro. Apple had been designing their PPC motherboards until then, so it makes sense.
How many chips in a Macbook Air were designed by Apple?
I was talking about the SoC in the mobiles. People forget Apple started with with designing their own motherboards called works of art by many. Wozniak even had a history of condensing the functionality of many chips into one.
Sure, and Samsung decided to do a machined case as well, and had no problem
Relatively small run.
Trying to insist that more capacity can't be added is, I think we'll agree, insane.
Nobody said that. They rightly said that it takes quite a bit of time to add it. At first most were saying the CNC cases couldn't be made in cost-efficient in production. I doubted it too. By the time everybody realized it worked profitably, Apple had the capacity locked. That put the competition behind. It was a full year before anything started to trickle out in small quantities. Nobody else has yet managed large quantities as Apple has.
Precisely my point. They do outsource some of their design; I don't think I've ever claimed they outsourced all of it, but I know I was quite explicitly attacked for claiming they outsource ANY of it. But I do agree - they do some in-house and they do some out-house. It's the way of the world.
I was talking about the SoC in the mobiles.
Ahhh, got it... They did buy a chip design company and thus integrated what used to be outsourced work. But they still use a lot of outsourced work as well - displays, even the ARM core (the core itself is from ARM - the SoC uses that block), memory chips, RF chips, etc.
Nobody said that.
Swordmaker has been quite insistent that there is zero capacity that no one else can make machined aluminum enclosures. I'm glad you agree that such a position is wrong.
They rightly said that it takes quite a bit of time to add it.
Which was my contention - it can be done, just takes some time and money. But it's not like you start a 12-18 month laptop development cycle and decide in the last 3 months that you want a machined enclosure! Those kinds of major features are decided up-front, and the time to build/add the capacity is there from the beginning - Samsung's new line is a perfect example.
As far as Samsung's new line, will it be a small run? Maybe for Samsung - but that would be a few million units a year, which isn't too far behind Apple's laptop sales (about 7-8 million a year). People forget just how big Samsung really is - for example, 1 out of every 4 phones sold in the US is a Samsung phone. They're HUGE.
At first most were saying the CNC cases couldn't be made in cost-efficient in production. I doubted it too.
And that's still the case (pun intended - I think...:). It's reserved for high-end $800+ laptops only, because it's an expensive operation for cosmetic reasons. You won't find it at the meat of the market where most units are sold - under $600. And in the cost-conscious business segment dominated by Lenovo, you'll find cast aluminum/magnesium cases because it's as heat-conductive as the machined aluminum, stronger (magnesium adds a good amount of rigidity), and since its lower cost you can get more features/bigger capacity components for the same final price.
CNC machining enclosures is really only viable on high-priced laptops; you don't find it on $500 units not because of capacity restraints, but because of economic restraints - it just does not make sense to spend 15% of your budget on a case.
It was a full year before anything started to trickle out in small quantities. Nobody else has yet managed large quantities as Apple has.
Because no one else is targeting a small niche of the market. Consider that Apple sells around 8 million laptops a year - a good amount. Netbooks - sub $400, tiny units - sell about 30 million a year.
Apple's market niche really is small - and it's high priced as well. That's not good or bad, but it speaks to the reality of what they do - they can do and offer all machined cases because their clients will pay for it, and in reality their client base is a very small segment of the market overall.
No one else is seriously using machined cases because the big part of the market is too price-sensitive to consider it. When you have netbooks alone outselling Apple laptops 4:1, consider what that means for most of the market. The sub-$600 laptop market is about 15 TIMES the size of Apple's laptop market. There are about 180 million laptops sold a year - Apple's 8 million really is a small segment of that.
And at the lower price where most companies make billions of dollars selling tens of millions of units, that premium for a machined aluminum case is just too much to bear. Most consumers will opt for a larger screen, or bigger hard drive, or more RAM or just a lower cost than to pay an extra $50-$75 for a machined aluminum case.
Apple has the capacity because they bought the capacity - and because no one else is using it. When Samsung wanted to do a similar thing, there was no problem bringing on the capacity needed/desired. There can be as much capacity as needed (contrary to what Swordmaker keeps insisting); it's a matter of whether other players see the need for their markets. And so far, for most - they don't see it, because their markets don't support the premium it demands.
It's really like a Rolls Royce owner sneering at everyone else without hand-rubbed burl walnut trim inside their car, and claiming it's because Rolls has a lock on the production capacity for hand-rubbed burl walnut trim. Rolls has the lock on capacity because 96% of the car market is below the price where that is even a viable option - not because Rolls has the capacity but because the capacity isn't needed by anyone else.