Oh, ok, cool... I misunderstood - I thought you removed that stuff whilst trimming the sides!
I still don't understand the whole battery thing they did, it's just bizarre. I mean, the battery is there, it's already eating up the space. Why not make it replaceable?
Does making the battery replaceable negatively impact sales of other products? I can't see how.
I understand why they stripped Bluetooth functionality out of Address Book when they went from Tiger to Leper... no more SMS from AB, no more dialing direct from AB (this used to be a very handy feature)... they want to sell iPhones, so they'll cripple OS X a little. As a Mac user, I may not like it but still, it makes some financial sense. We all have to accept that iPhone is bigger than OS X; I mean, they even delayed OS X 10.5 because iPhone was more important (turns out they should've delayed 10.5 a little while longer).
But burying the battery in the MBA just makes no sense at all...
I still don't understand the whole battery thing they did, it's just bizarre. I mean, the battery is there, it's already eating up the space. Why not make it replaceable?
Replaceable batteries take up a lot more space.
Think about is as a cross section:
In the air, it is possible to have motherboard followed by battery followed by case.
If the battery were replaceable, it would have to be motherboard, then case, then battery's case, then battery, then battery's case, then computer's case.
If the battery were replaceable, it would have to be motherboard, then case, then battery's case, then battery, then battery's case, then computer's case.
Why does the battery need a case? That takes up unnecessary space (hey, that rhymes!) .
Example: it could be like a cell phone battery. Put a simple, space-saving access panel on the bottom of the MBA. Some cell phone batteries are just taped with leads to a miniature connector.
There are a lot more space restrictions in cell phones and somehow, they manage to make batteries user-replaceable without removing 10 screws and violating your warranty. The MBA is not the result of a major design program, otherwise they would've changed (finally!) the worn-out, tiresome and years-old metal enclosure. This was a quick spin, low cost, de-featured deal.
I think there's some other reason we're not seeing why Apple didn't do this because I believe it was doable. Maybe time to market and minimal program costs were the overriding goals & restrictions. It's something else, tho - iPhone has the same battery limitation. Am I the only one who finds this curious?
A "space-saving access panel" requires more bulk than just a wall. You have to add screws and screw mounts or a latch and a tongue or some other means of accessing the panel, there would need to be some kind of liner to the panel to prevent people from poking other parts of the machine... All this would add a little bulk, weight and increase the over-all temperature of the device.
Your cell phone would be even slimmer and weight less if it didn't have a replaceable battery.
You have to add screws and screw mounts or a latch and a tongue or some other means of accessing the panel, there would need to be some kind of liner to the panel to prevent people from poking other parts of the machine...
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I understand what you're saying & you could be right-on here. But consider for a second that they've already dumped a boatload of screws into holding that battery in place, so there's a good opportunity here to even reduce the overall screw quantity on the BOM. Fewer screws = less space, less weight, less labor, less cost.
There are batteries available at similar power specs that absorb different spacial dimensions, horizontal and vertical. Options exist. Longer, thinner & shorter, thicker.
A latch could be recessed and sit flush up against the butt end of the battery pack (a vertical area already being used) & a liner requires very little overall thickness. A plastic tab could be attached to the battery so fingers need not be inserted; once the access panel is opened, the tab protrudes, and that's how the battery is removed (ala the hard drive in MacBook). I don't see these as show-stoppers - with some clever mechanical engineering - something Apple is supposedly very good at - this could have been achieved. This is more of a re-allocation of space already being used rather than an exercise adding more stuff.
Additionally, changing the design from the ancient aluminum to a cool new composite for example would've allowed even greater space savings, more than enough to allow for a liner and possibly even a battery case. A carbon composite material would not need to be as thick as aluminum, and, would've offered greater WiFi signal strength, similar to the benefit I received moving from an aluminum PowerBook to a plastic MacBook. It also would've weighed less. We've worked with this company in the past, there are many others: http://www.diamond-mold.com/composites.php
I still have this feeling - for lack of a better word - that something else is at play here.
Apple is giving the greens a nod with the aluminum... it is easier to recycle.
Ha! Good line. Of course, we all know that Apple's thumb didn't get very green until just recently after taking a hammering in the press & elsewhere... meanwhile, the aluminum enclosure product line has been around since, when? The 13th century? Seems like it
3. You can barely tell when raw aluminum is scratched.
4. Aluminum is more durable than plastic at lesser thicknesses.
5. Aluminum dissipates heat much better than plastic (an issue considering the size of the vents).
6. it doesn't require Apple to start relations with new, untested suppliers for carbon composite materials.
7. Apple doesn't have to build and design the all-new equipment required to manufacture products using carbon composite.
8. Apple is now offering jobs related to the use of carbon composites, so they have considered it and they are going to do it. But it would ave been too expensive and too long term to design an all-new product around all-new materials they did not yet have experience with.
Also, matt_s's going from an aluminum PowerBook to a plastic MacBook has less to do with the case material. The MacBook got slightly upgraded WiFi hardware when Apple went Intel as a result of better power efficiency and more processing power. Comparing older hardware performance to newer hardware is not a fair benchmark because their is no experimental control. Instead, compare a brand-new MacBook to a brand-new MacBook Pro; then you will get a closer comparison, since the hardware that is essential to wireless performance is basically the same between the two. Besides the circuit board hardware, the actual design of the antenna has an unbelievably huge effect on reception. That's why the One Laptop Per Child laptop has roughly 3-5 times the signal reception of the average laptop; it has two positionable antennae.
Quote:
...the aluminum enclosure product line has been around since, when? The 13th century? Seems like it
Just for the arbitrary sake of being precise, Apple's first use of exposed aluminum as a case material as we know it today was 2003, though the current MacBook Pro design dates back to 2001 when the PowerBook G4 had a titanium case. Aluminum was a smart choice because it was much more readily available, thus much cheaper, and it was much easier to manufacture with.
That said, as carbon composite materials become cheaper and easier to make, it will likely succeed aluminum, as is evidenced by Apple's latest job offerings. But aluminum will likely remain the choice material for devices where heat dissipation and airflow are both limited by product design.
This is the bottom of the Air with the case removed:
You tell me where there is empty space to shave. The "door of infamy" is on the upper-left. The network card is blue, tucked into the lower-right next to the battery. The battey, btw, takes up the entire thickness of the space in the case.
Notice how the door connectors have to use a flexible bridge over the hard drive to get to the mother board. There isn't enough space on the motherboard to make that ribbon cable wide enough for more ports, nor is there enough room below the door to fit any more, because that's the sound card taking the entire length between the door and the edge of the case (at least up until the IR sensor).
That's the entirety of that green sliver you saw in the upper-right in the first picture. Not a lot there, and no, it doesn't go underneath the battery.
Sorry for the large image; it was the only one I could find and still be clear.
Some might suggest getting rid of the tapered edges, but they do serve a purpose. Two or three, that I can see. First, it makes it unreasonably easy to slip in between objects in a stuffed briefcase or bag, sort of like a knife, or the prow of a boat. Second, look at the windows of a Gothic cathedral. The traditional Roman arch, in all of its structural integrity, was reinvented by making it pointy. This increased the strength of stone structures immensely; it does the same for the edges of the Air. A rigid square has weak points just for having multiple corners at which it can flex and still maintain the same perimeter; it's basic geometry. Rigid circles cannot flex, nor can triangles. The tri-cle shape of the Gothic cathedral window is thus even stronger. The fewer creases in metal, the fewer spots predisposed to deformation. It doesn't just protect the edges, it increases the rigidity of the entire notebook. Given the overall thinness of the design, every advantage helps. It's easier to bend a sheet of paper than a sheet of plywood. The final reason is bragging rights. Their laptop is thinner than anyone else's, even if this thinness is limited to the edges. But even at its fattest point it is thinner than the fattest point on any of its competitors.
Good explanation. Anyone bragging that they "redesigned" the Air needs to explain how they are going to fit that oh-so-critical second USB port in there. There is no room at all.
The battery takes the entire thickness. There is no way to make a "bay" for it.
The big question now is... if the thing is called the "MacBook Air", then why didn't they explore using wireless power to recharge the battery. They fell short on their concept.
Apple is giving the greens a nod with the aluminum... it is easier to recycle.
Except, the "hidden" cost of aluminium/aluminum is that it is extremely energy intensive to produce.
here's a quote: "While the U.S. aluminum industry has reduced its energy intensity by 58 percent over the past 40 years, the aluminum industry still consumes approximately 800 trillion Btu of energy each year, or slightly below 1% of all U.S. energy use. Based on a recent study, the energy consumed by the U.S. primary aluminum industry is more than three times greater than what is theoretically necessary...."
The big question now is... if the thing is called the "MacBook Air", then why didn't they explore using wireless power to recharge the battery. They fell short on their concept.
I think he may partly be joking here. Besides the fact that Apple is already working on it and they wouldn't have used it if it wasn't ready. Usually.
As far as a "battery bay" goes, it might not be possible to make a "bay", per se, but a removable panel exposing only the battery should theoretically still be possible. But this doesn't fix some of the other complications involved in removing the battery even if the 9 screws holding it down were reduced to something more managable, like 2. How about the ribbon cables? While they are detatchable, they are fragile; and power contacts (like in a cell phone) would take up even more precious room.
I believe with Intel advancing their processor line. Its possible that in the future, they will be a more powerfull MBA (maybe as powerfull as the MB very soon).
But dang it is sexy, the more I look at it, the more Im tempted in owning it. But Im waiting for either Montevina or Nahalem (Maybe Nahalem is a bit too long to wait for college).
I think the old one looks better, theres no more firewire =[
Mentioned this somewhere before, but FireWire is a dying element, I think. The newest HD video cameras from Canon do not have FW; they only have USB 2. Sadly, not enough companies jumped onto FW for it to become sufficiently mainstream.
How about instead of the mini-DVI port, a similarly sized port, that acts like a micro-dock connector. Of course the pin out would have to be more dense. The adapter would looks something like this:
But a little wider and would give you a DVI, 1 Firewire, 1 USB, 1 ethernet, 1 audio in. The mini dock would be an additional $99. The Air would still come with the DVI/VGA adapter.
Comments
the video out is still there....
Oh, ok, cool... I misunderstood - I thought you removed that stuff whilst trimming the sides!
I still don't understand the whole battery thing they did, it's just bizarre. I mean, the battery is there, it's already eating up the space. Why not make it replaceable?
Does making the battery replaceable negatively impact sales of other products? I can't see how.
I understand why they stripped Bluetooth functionality out of Address Book when they went from Tiger to Leper... no more SMS from AB, no more dialing direct from AB (this used to be a very handy feature)... they want to sell iPhones, so they'll cripple OS X a little. As a Mac user, I may not like it but still, it makes some financial sense. We all have to accept that iPhone is bigger than OS X; I mean, they even delayed OS X 10.5 because iPhone was more important (turns out they should've delayed 10.5 a little while longer).
But burying the battery in the MBA just makes no sense at all...
I still don't understand the whole battery thing they did, it's just bizarre. I mean, the battery is there, it's already eating up the space. Why not make it replaceable?
Replaceable batteries take up a lot more space.
Think about is as a cross section:
In the air, it is possible to have motherboard followed by battery followed by case.
If the battery were replaceable, it would have to be motherboard, then case, then battery's case, then battery, then battery's case, then computer's case.
The latter has a lot more stuff to pack in.
If the battery were replaceable, it would have to be motherboard, then case, then battery's case, then battery, then battery's case, then computer's case.
Why does the battery need a case? That takes up unnecessary space (hey, that rhymes!) .
Example: it could be like a cell phone battery. Put a simple, space-saving access panel on the bottom of the MBA. Some cell phone batteries are just taped with leads to a miniature connector.
There are a lot more space restrictions in cell phones and somehow, they manage to make batteries user-replaceable without removing 10 screws and violating your warranty. The MBA is not the result of a major design program, otherwise they would've changed (finally!) the worn-out, tiresome and years-old metal enclosure. This was a quick spin, low cost, de-featured deal.
I think there's some other reason we're not seeing why Apple didn't do this because I believe it was doable. Maybe time to market and minimal program costs were the overriding goals & restrictions. It's something else, tho - iPhone has the same battery limitation. Am I the only one who finds this curious?
Your cell phone would be even slimmer and weight less if it didn't have a replaceable battery.
You have to add screws and screw mounts or a latch and a tongue or some other means of accessing the panel, there would need to be some kind of liner to the panel to prevent people from poking other parts of the machine...
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I understand what you're saying & you could be right-on here. But consider for a second that they've already dumped a boatload of screws into holding that battery in place, so there's a good opportunity here to even reduce the overall screw quantity on the BOM. Fewer screws = less space, less weight, less labor, less cost.
There are batteries available at similar power specs that absorb different spacial dimensions, horizontal and vertical. Options exist. Longer, thinner & shorter, thicker.
A latch could be recessed and sit flush up against the butt end of the battery pack (a vertical area already being used) & a liner requires very little overall thickness. A plastic tab could be attached to the battery so fingers need not be inserted; once the access panel is opened, the tab protrudes, and that's how the battery is removed (ala the hard drive in MacBook). I don't see these as show-stoppers - with some clever mechanical engineering - something Apple is supposedly very good at - this could have been achieved. This is more of a re-allocation of space already being used rather than an exercise adding more stuff.
Additionally, changing the design from the ancient aluminum to a cool new composite for example would've allowed even greater space savings, more than enough to allow for a liner and possibly even a battery case. A carbon composite material would not need to be as thick as aluminum, and, would've offered greater WiFi signal strength, similar to the benefit I received moving from an aluminum PowerBook to a plastic MacBook. It also would've weighed less. We've worked with this company in the past, there are many others: http://www.diamond-mold.com/composites.php
I still have this feeling - for lack of a better word - that something else is at play here.
Apple is giving the greens a nod with the aluminum... it is easier to recycle.
Ha! Good line. Of course, we all know that Apple's thumb didn't get very green until just recently after taking a hammering in the press & elsewhere... meanwhile, the aluminum enclosure product line has been around since, when? The 13th century? Seems like it
1. easily recyclable
2. easy to work with in the manufacturing process
3. You can barely tell when raw aluminum is scratched.
4. Aluminum is more durable than plastic at lesser thicknesses.
5. Aluminum dissipates heat much better than plastic (an issue considering the size of the vents).
6. it doesn't require Apple to start relations with new, untested suppliers for carbon composite materials.
7. Apple doesn't have to build and design the all-new equipment required to manufacture products using carbon composite.
8. Apple is now offering jobs related to the use of carbon composites, so they have considered it and they are going to do it. But it would ave been too expensive and too long term to design an all-new product around all-new materials they did not yet have experience with.
Also, matt_s's going from an aluminum PowerBook to a plastic MacBook has less to do with the case material. The MacBook got slightly upgraded WiFi hardware when Apple went Intel as a result of better power efficiency and more processing power. Comparing older hardware performance to newer hardware is not a fair benchmark because their is no experimental control. Instead, compare a brand-new MacBook to a brand-new MacBook Pro; then you will get a closer comparison, since the hardware that is essential to wireless performance is basically the same between the two. Besides the circuit board hardware, the actual design of the antenna has an unbelievably huge effect on reception. That's why the One Laptop Per Child laptop has roughly 3-5 times the signal reception of the average laptop; it has two positionable antennae.
...the aluminum enclosure product line has been around since, when? The 13th century? Seems like it
Just for the arbitrary sake of being precise, Apple's first use of exposed aluminum as a case material as we know it today was 2003, though the current MacBook Pro design dates back to 2001 when the PowerBook G4 had a titanium case. Aluminum was a smart choice because it was much more readily available, thus much cheaper, and it was much easier to manufacture with.
That said, as carbon composite materials become cheaper and easier to make, it will likely succeed aluminum, as is evidenced by Apple's latest job offerings. But aluminum will likely remain the choice material for devices where heat dissipation and airflow are both limited by product design.
This is the bottom of the Air with the case removed:
You tell me where there is empty space to shave. The "door of infamy" is on the upper-left. The network card is blue, tucked into the lower-right next to the battery. The battey, btw, takes up the entire thickness of the space in the case.
Notice how the door connectors have to use a flexible bridge over the hard drive to get to the mother board. There isn't enough space on the motherboard to make that ribbon cable wide enough for more ports, nor is there enough room below the door to fit any more, because that's the sound card taking the entire length between the door and the edge of the case (at least up until the IR sensor).
Speaking of the motherboard: (larger version Here http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/images/air_logic_top.jpg )
That's the entirety of that green sliver you saw in the upper-right in the first picture. Not a lot there, and no, it doesn't go underneath the battery.
Sorry for the large image; it was the only one I could find and still be clear.
Some might suggest getting rid of the tapered edges, but they do serve a purpose. Two or three, that I can see. First, it makes it unreasonably easy to slip in between objects in a stuffed briefcase or bag, sort of like a knife, or the prow of a boat. Second, look at the windows of a Gothic cathedral. The traditional Roman arch, in all of its structural integrity, was reinvented by making it pointy. This increased the strength of stone structures immensely; it does the same for the edges of the Air. A rigid square has weak points just for having multiple corners at which it can flex and still maintain the same perimeter; it's basic geometry. Rigid circles cannot flex, nor can triangles. The tri-cle shape of the Gothic cathedral window is thus even stronger. The fewer creases in metal, the fewer spots predisposed to deformation. It doesn't just protect the edges, it increases the rigidity of the entire notebook. Given the overall thinness of the design, every advantage helps. It's easier to bend a sheet of paper than a sheet of plywood. The final reason is bragging rights. Their laptop is thinner than anyone else's, even if this thinness is limited to the edges. But even at its fattest point it is thinner than the fattest point on any of its competitors.
More tear-down pics at ifixit.com.
Edit: Thanks to lundy who found an image that fit the forum margins. I guess I overlooked that one.
The battery takes the entire thickness. There is no way to make a "bay" for it.
The big question now is... if the thing is called the "MacBook Air", then why didn't they explore using wireless power to recharge the battery. They fell short on their concept.
Nicolai Tesla is rolling over in his grave....
Apple is giving the greens a nod with the aluminum... it is easier to recycle.
Except, the "hidden" cost of aluminium/aluminum is that it is extremely energy intensive to produce.
here's a quote: "While the U.S. aluminum industry has reduced its energy intensity by 58 percent over the past 40 years, the aluminum industry still consumes approximately 800 trillion Btu of energy each year, or slightly below 1% of all U.S. energy use. Based on a recent study, the energy consumed by the U.S. primary aluminum industry is more than three times greater than what is theoretically necessary...."
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/office_e...st_052004.html
SpamSandwich:
The big question now is... if the thing is called the "MacBook Air", then why didn't they explore using wireless power to recharge the battery. They fell short on their concept.
I think he may partly be joking here. Besides the fact that Apple is already working on it and they wouldn't have used it if it wasn't ready. Usually.
As far as a "battery bay" goes, it might not be possible to make a "bay", per se, but a removable panel exposing only the battery should theoretically still be possible. But this doesn't fix some of the other complications involved in removing the battery even if the 9 screws holding it down were reduced to something more managable, like 2. How about the ribbon cables? While they are detatchable, they are fragile; and power contacts (like in a cell phone) would take up even more precious room.
But dang it is sexy, the more I look at it, the more Im tempted in owning it. But Im waiting for either Montevina or Nahalem (Maybe Nahalem is a bit too long to wait for college).
I think the old one looks better, theres no more firewire =[
Mentioned this somewhere before, but FireWire is a dying element, I think. The newest HD video cameras from Canon do not have FW; they only have USB 2. Sadly, not enough companies jumped onto FW for it to become sufficiently mainstream.
I heard something bout USB3 being faster then FW, is it true?
Its rated up to 4800.
But a little wider and would give you a DVI, 1 Firewire, 1 USB, 1 ethernet, 1 audio in. The mini dock would be an additional $99. The Air would still come with the DVI/VGA adapter.
I use the MBA every day for creative work as well as business ...
Hi Berger, cool.. nice to hear you have teh MBA.