Not necessarily. Lots of things work differently when you embiggen them.
But, to your point, GTAT did not have much experience using even their smaller furnaces. A very serious lack of production experience and it is amazing to me that Apple didn't "get" that right away.
What I don't understand is how can GT develope an awesome new furnace that works great without knowing how to use a furnace in the first place.
I understand there is a process involved but without knowing what the process is how can one develope a tool for a process.
Those 'pucks' in the top photos are each 575 pounds of pure Sapphire !!! ?
Depends on what you mean by pure. Corundum seems to get much of its value from being impure, the trace elements making it ‘pretty’ and causing women to get all glittery-eyed. Red corundum is so impure it gets its own name.
Depends on what you mean by pure. Corundum seems to get much of its value from being impure, the trace elements making it ‘pretty’ and causing women to get all glittery-eyed. Red corundum is so impure it gets its own name. ;)
Yes, the last one definately has a red hue. And it is so big I' m sure they can use the good bits for something.
Mill a new pair of slippers for Tim perhaps ?
What I don't understand is how can GT develope an awesome new furnace that works great without knowing how to use a furnace in the first place.
I understand there is a process involved but without knowing what the process is how can one develope a tool for a process.
Good question. It would be interesting to know how well companies that bought their furnaces make out. What is their success rate? I can't help but wonder if the claimed 'advanced new process' wasn't a scam intended to sell furnaces to Apple and Tim was too sharp to fall for it but hedged his bets with the way he arranged things resulting in GTAT having to prove it on their own dime as it were.
Depends on what you mean by pure. Corundum seems to get much of its value from being impure, the trace elements making it ‘pretty’ and causing women to get all glittery-eyed. Red corundum is so impure it gets its own name. ;)
I was just thinking that all those failed chunks must be making a lot of jewelers drool ...
Is GTAT operated by Samsung? Same amount of fairness and competence. (like when Apple payed 4 billion to Samsung so they could build fabs for semiconductor parts and Samsung started to use the same parts for its own phones. Then brainwashed majority of %u201Cexperts%u201D that Apple are evil and that Apple only claim to fame is round edges on phones)
BTW. 5-10 years ago Apple was often in the forefront in technology. The %u201Csad%u201D thing with Apple being so big is that they can%u2019t be as cutting edge. I mean: Apple needs parts for 50 million iOS devices per month. Sapphire screens are an example. I bet that GTAT could supply screens for hundred of thousands of devices. The problem is that Apple need tens of millions.
But I wish Apple started to manufacture its own stuff = they could have more control and not be in the hands of foundries like Samsung and TSMC. Apple is big enough to have their own high end wafer bakery, (<--- that was Nokias edge before MSFT destroyed them. Nokia had own fabs, own design, own OS. They could make phones for 50 dollar with profit. With outsourcing its impossible to make same profit since one more part need money. Own foundries is also the only reason why Intel is relevant. X86 have its 30% die size penalty because of CISC. Intel can manage that as long as they are 1-2 nodes ahead of TSMC / Samsung /GloFlo.
A perfect world would have Intel sell one of its foundries to Apple since Intels fabs are not being used as full capacity.
Instead of buying its own shares and burn them, think ahead dear Apple. You are repeating the same misstakes as 1985. Dividends, burning shares and taking huge 40 billion loans. Steve is doing flips in his grave...
less than 50% yield on boules worth north of 20 000$ and taking a month to produce ? No wonder they did go in bankruptcy without any help from Apple.
What I don't understand is that GTAT had (or seemed to have) a good reputation as a furnace manufacturer. The manufacturer of any piece of equipment is the one which, by definition, has the best knowledge of getting the best performance of it, if sometimes not the cheapest way.
So there is no way they were not aware of the risks of low yields. Then, why they accepted the contract ?
And GTAT growing method was innovative and adapted to large screens while the mature methods (KY) is not and would be quite wasteful for such large object, thus increasing price.
What product is Apple is working on that requires a chunk of sapphire that weighs 578 pounds, or even half that?
I don't know how the boules are turned into a finished product but it would seem that making pieces of sapphire which are maybe up to 6" diagonal and a couple millimeters thick would be applicable to products that can be carried around in your pocket or on your wrist. Even using it for a 23" touch screen iMac would not need 578 pounds in a single block.
You would think that a company that makes industrial equipment would have plenty of connections with companies that [B]use[/B] such equipment and therefore would easily find someone to partner with. And if they were out of their league trying to go it alone, that's their own fault. Fortunately this seems like a nuisance rather than disaster for Apple. The only blowback for Apple investors hit people who ignored Tim Cook's advice (and assumed they could read the Apple supply chain tea leaves).
Depends on what you mean by pure. Corundum seems to get much of its value from being impure, the trace elements making it ‘pretty’ and causing women to get all glittery-eyed. Red corundum is so impure it gets its own name.
That's true. But there are still industrial and scientific applications for the white sapphire. There's probably enough material in those boules of good enough quality to make quite a few windows for iPhone cameras, for example. Foolish to trash them, when Ebay is available at the very least. You can sell anything on Ebay--I once sold a free AOL install floppy disk for $5.
They should completely "clean house" and keep absolutely no one previously employed. Sounds like a real mess GT created.
I hope you don't have an upper management position in real life. I wouldn't blame the soldiers for a disasterous battle plan, for not having the necessary training, and poor supervision.
I hope you don't have an upper management position in real life. I wouldn't blame the soldiers for a disasterous battle plan, for not having the necessary training, and poor supervision.
I'd be mainly concerned that the workers were "friends of the family". A corrupt system must be completely purged and rebuilt from scratch.
Comments
Did somebody say F I A S C O!
No. I didn't hear that. I think it's worse.
What I don't understand is how can GT develope an awesome new furnace that works great without knowing how to use a furnace in the first place.
I understand there is a process involved but without knowing what the process is how can one develope a tool for a process.
2 things:
1 - the first few pictures are NSFW!! They look like condoms.
2 - Sog, try not to get banned again!
Those 'pucks' in the top photos are each 575 pounds of pure Sapphire !!! ?
Depends on what you mean by pure. Corundum seems to get much of its value from being impure, the trace elements making it ‘pretty’ and causing women to get all glittery-eyed. Red corundum is so impure it gets its own name.
Mill a new pair of slippers for Tim perhaps ?
Good question. It would be interesting to know how well companies that bought their furnaces make out. What is their success rate? I can't help but wonder if the claimed 'advanced new process' wasn't a scam intended to sell furnaces to Apple and Tim was too sharp to fall for it but hedged his bets with the way he arranged things resulting in GTAT having to prove it on their own dime as it were.
I was just thinking that all those failed chunks must be making a lot of jewelers drool ...
(like when Apple payed 4 billion to Samsung so they could build fabs for semiconductor parts and Samsung started to use the same parts for its own phones. Then brainwashed majority of %u201Cexperts%u201D that Apple are evil and that Apple only claim to fame is round edges on phones)
BTW.
5-10 years ago Apple was often in the forefront in technology. The %u201Csad%u201D thing with Apple being so big is that they can%u2019t be as cutting edge. I mean: Apple needs parts for 50 million iOS devices per month. Sapphire screens are an example. I bet that GTAT could supply screens for hundred of thousands of devices. The problem is that Apple need tens of millions.
But I wish Apple started to manufacture its own stuff = they could have more control and not be in the hands of foundries like Samsung and TSMC. Apple is big enough to have their own high end wafer bakery, (<--- that was Nokias edge before MSFT destroyed them. Nokia had own fabs, own design, own OS. They could make phones for 50 dollar with profit. With outsourcing its impossible to make same profit since one more part need money.
Own foundries is also the only reason why Intel is relevant. X86 have its 30% die size penalty because of CISC. Intel can manage that as long as they are 1-2 nodes ahead of TSMC / Samsung /GloFlo.
A perfect world would have Intel sell one of its foundries to Apple since Intels fabs are not being used as full capacity.
Instead of buying its own shares and burn them, think ahead dear Apple. You are repeating the same misstakes as 1985. Dividends, burning shares and taking huge 40 billion loans. Steve is doing flips in his grave...
less than 50% yield on boules worth north of 20 000$ and taking a month to produce ? No wonder they did go in bankruptcy without any help from Apple.
What I don't understand is that GTAT had (or seemed to have) a good reputation as a furnace manufacturer. The manufacturer of any piece of equipment is the one which, by definition, has the best knowledge of getting the best performance of it, if sometimes not the cheapest way.
So there is no way they were not aware of the risks of low yields. Then, why they accepted the contract ?
And GTAT growing method was innovative and adapted to large screens while the mature methods (KY) is not and would be quite wasteful for such large object, thus increasing price.
What product is Apple is working on that requires a chunk of sapphire that weighs 578 pounds, or even half that?
I don't know how the boules are turned into a finished product but it would seem that making pieces of sapphire which are maybe up to 6" diagonal and a couple millimeters thick would be applicable to products that can be carried around in your pocket or on your wrist. Even using it for a 23" touch screen iMac would not need 578 pounds in a single block.
They should completely "clean house" and keep absolutely no one previously employed. Sounds like a real mess GT created.
Depends on what you mean by pure. Corundum seems to get much of its value from being impure, the trace elements making it ‘pretty’ and causing women to get all glittery-eyed. Red corundum is so impure it gets its own name.
That's true. But there are still industrial and scientific applications for the white sapphire. There's probably enough material in those boules of good enough quality to make quite a few windows for iPhone cameras, for example. Foolish to trash them, when Ebay is available at the very least. You can sell anything on Ebay--I once sold a free AOL install floppy disk for $5.
Each of those boules is a 1.31 million caret gem. (A caret is a 1/5 of a gram.)
I hope you don't have an upper management position in real life. I wouldn't blame the soldiers for a disasterous battle plan, for not having the necessary training, and poor supervision.
You can sell anything on Ebay--I once sold a free AOL install floppy disk for $5.
I'm sure it's worth more today
I'd be mainly concerned that the workers were "friends of the family". A corrupt system must be completely purged and rebuilt from scratch.