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.
You are probably being mixed in with dennisw, who continually claims Apple engages in the common industry practice of simply choosing designs made by the Chinese, or at most specifying what you want and letting the Chinese design it. He fails to realize that Apple controls everything, and designs most of it.
They did buy a chip design company and thus integrated what used to be outsourced work.
Actually, they bought three -- two high-perf/low-power firms and a graphics firm. But the point here is that Apple designs how it all goes together. They do have the strangest looking arrangements for motherboards, but they're specifically designed for that one enclosure, often skirting around the battery, using all available space.
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
I still haven't seen another laptop that's as light, thin and strong as an Apple. Under 1" thick and I can't flex a 17" MacBook Pro, but all the competition creaks under the strain. Other notebooks the size of the Air feel like flimsy toys. The unibody aluminum does give unique structural qualities.
Netbooks - sub $400, tiny units - sell about 30 million a year.
If you are going to include netbooks, you should also include iPads. And iPads are cannibalizing laptop sales (Acer especially suffered upon its release).
Apple's market niche really is small
Premium isn't what you'd describe as a small niche. It's a market segment, the other end from cheap, and it's ruled by Apple.
When Samsung wanted to do a similar thing, there was no problem bringing on the capacity needed/desired.
The point is that they would have had a problem had they tried to immediately copy Apple, because Apple had all of the capacity locked up. Notice this comes out long after Apple did that, likely when spare capacity, or the ability to create more capacity, finally became available.
The overall point is that this is the way Apple does business. The computer industry is full of copycats, especially of Apple. Apple has tried the courts to stop copycats, but that takes a while and some governments don't care. It's easier to simply buy up all of the capacity, or fund the building of massive capacity and contract exclusive supplies. This leaves the rest of the industry fighting for scraps for years, fully vulnerable to price and availability fluctuations.
And the guy who invented this system is now CEO of Apple.
No, Sidelines, Apple BOUGHT the capacity and INSTALLED it for the CMs... before that no one other than Apple was MAKING mono bloc Aluminum cases other than Apple in such quantities. Apple designed, engineered, and pioneered the technique and SHOWED FoxConn and the other makers how to do it. Get your facts straight. When Samsung, HP, Lenovo and the other makers saw the public WANTED them, they wanted to make them too... but the capacity simply was not there, other than on the Apple lines. You can try to revise history and the facts as much as you want... and also try to put words in my posts that aren't there... but it doesn't help you.