Solipsism Gradient

Posted by uliwitness:

“When it comes to Japanese PC manufacturers, their manufacturing plants will complain or add their own technical efforts to lower cost, if a proposed structural design was insufficient,” one of the engineers said. “The MacBook Air gives me an impression that its manufacturing plant packaged the computer exactly as ordered by Apple.”

Rainer,

thanks for posting this — it mirrors exactly the thoughts I had when I read this news bit, and now I don’t have to coherently blog about it anymore.

FWIW, from what I heard, this is a common thing with Asian manufacturers. They like to improve products, but since they usually don’t have the whole list of why something should be done this way and not another, the customer of these manufacturing plants isn’t always happy with that.

Some western companies have “solved” this by putting QA guys in place that will babysit the manufacturers and make sure stuff gets produced the way they requested it, for exactly that reason.

I guess this is a cultural issue that will have to be resolved by understanding each other…

Oh, BTW, also found your review of the FireWire power specs interesting. I was hoping someone with better electrical skills than me would eventually post the fundamental maths involved to prove/disprove the “No FireWire cuz it needs too much juice” theory that’s been bandied about.

The snowball effect I was writing about is also very evident in the design of the MacBook Air. I’ve posted before about some aspects of this (I was wrong about it having fewer internal screws, though).

Just saw this: Japanese engineers trash MacBook Air. Here’s the original article in somewhat clumsy English. Some choice quotes:

“Can we say that the MacBook Air has a perfect, sophisticated external appearance, but its insides are full of waste?”

…

What astonished all those engineers was the fact that the computer had a very costly structure. For example, it used an extremely large number of screws to attach components. About 30 screws were used to attach the keyboard alone.

…

“When it comes to Japanese PC manufacturers, their manufacturing plants will complain or add their own technical efforts to lower cost, if a proposed structural design was insufficient,” one of the engineers said. “The MacBook Air gives me an impression that its manufacturing plant packaged the computer exactly as ordered by Apple.”

…

Based on the results of our teardown project, we guess Apple is not paying much attention to both workmanship of the hardware design and comprehensive cost reduction…The MacBook Air’s mysterious internal design might be a violent antithesis against Japanese manufacturing, which allows no compromise even in detailed parts of the hardware.

This is a very interesting insight into manufacturing. Can you imagine Steve Jobs’ reaction to somebody at the Air factory deciding to take out 25 of the 30 screws that hold the keyboard? Heads would roll!

No doubt all those screws (and the other things they considered “waste”) contribute to the Air’s extremely solid feel that’s remarked upon by everybody who has handled one. Contrast this to all the “this thing must be soo fragile” comments, just after the launch, by people who had not handled one. Obviously people are used to small electronic devices following the (apparent) Japanese practice of shaving off internal “waste” to save a little space and money and ignore the consequence of a flimsy feel… something that would be especially accentuated in such a thin device as the Air.

So, this article betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of Apple’s design strengths and intentions. Their definition of “workmanship and… cost reduction” is very different. From what I can tell, the Air was designed from the outset to be extremely thin and rugged, while maintaining adequate battery life and performance. These considerations snowball to the extent that the battery uses up 2/3 of the space, and seems to be (along with the keyboard) itself a structural element.

Everything else flows logically from that. To put in a FireWire connector means reserving resources for a 7W additional power drain – that’s 1A extra current at the 7.2V battery. It also means an extra power supply to jack this up to the 9 to 12V required at the connector, extra PCB traces, and so forth. The battery has a capacity of 37 watt-hours, meaning that at the rated duration of 5 hours, the average power draw is slightly over 7W; this would double when a FireWire drive is connected, meaning battery life would be only half, 2.5 hours. Also, the extra connector would mean widening the flip-down door and shaving off maybe 2cm off the battery on that side… more capacity reduction. The 45W external power supply would also have to be beefed up, and the internal charging circuitry as well… this means more heat dissipation. It would probably have been necessary to make the battery itself thicker, maybe 5mm or more.

Now look at a typical Ethernet connector; it’s thicker than the Air’s door, so some millimeters would have had to be added to the Air’s thickness, too; as well as taking the extra chunk out of the battery as well.

Same applies to an internal DVD drive. If it doesn’t work as a burner too, they’d have complained – but imagine the power requirements, or read the Lenovo x300 review; Lenovo engineers are very capable too, but they decided on different trade-offs. I have handled some other brands of small laptops from Toshiba and I must say I was unimpressed by the feel and finish.

Finally, imagine the Air with a removable battery. This means extra connectors, a case opening, of course with either a full-width extra wall (meaning at least 4mm extra thickness) or some heavy-duty latches (considering the battery is 2/3 of the size and a similar proportion of the weight of the Air). Consider the loss of rigidity that would imply, and the extra size and weight that would have to be “wasted” to counteract that.

So that’s my point. Any change in the Air’s design immediately snowballs into a larger, heavier, hotter and (probably) less solid-feeling machine. Jobs obviously thought it was worthwhile to concentrate on those aspects, and it’s rather shortsighted to conclude that “Apple is not paying much attention to … workmanship”.

Some more thoughts about the Air.

I finally saw the pertinent parts of the keynote and paid attention to the shots of the Air’s interior and of the main board. Wow, that thing is cramped; 2/3 of it is battery. There’ve been serious announcements of progress in battery technology and for the next years we can expect even slimmer machines and/or longer capacity; still, it seems that Apple now considers 5 hours (if real) as a good compromise between bulk/weight and battery life.

The Air no doubt makes use of Apple’s recent patent (sorry, no time to find a URL for it) for glueing together a precision-cast aluminum chassis – meaning very few internal mounting screws and posts, much tighter tolerances, and serious amounts of weight and dimensions shaved off, as well as better heat distribution. It also means that the case feels like a single unit; it’s significant that people who’ve handled the Air report that it feels very solid, not at all fragile like it looks. Especially the moveable port door is said to feel solidly reliable.

People calling for a removable battery no doubt are unaware that such a thing would mean a huge case opening, meaning extra ribbing elsewhere to counteract the rigidity loss, mounting screws and a good lock, what amounts to a double wall inside the unit when the battery is mounted, a pair of connectors and so forth. Meaning perhaps 200g extra in weight, 4mm in depth and $50 (at least) added to the bill of materials… all to accomodate maybe 10% of users who need an extra battery for flying tourist class?

I remember from my hardware design days how there are cascading design choices like this. Someone comes in and says “can’t we do such-and-such” and they fall off their chair when you explain the consequences. Another example is the much-bemoaned lack of peripheral ports. But consider FireWire. Yes, Apple pioneered FireWire and it’s a great technology… but check the power requirements:

…[it] can supply up to 45 watts of power per port at up to 30 volts…

That would be the entire 45W of the external power supply right there! Admittedly Apple’s other laptops already lower that to about half by supplying less voltage. For instance, the FireWire developer note says for MacBooks:

The MacBook’s six-pin FireWire connector provides unregulated 9 V to 12 V power with a maximum load of 0.75 A. Developers should design to use 7 W sustained power, or less.

Contrast this to the new MacPro, which can supply 18W per port (28W total on all four ports), and you see how laptop power design considerations are important. Supplying 0.75A to get the standard 7W on a FireWire connector would have meant larger board traces, probably a thicker board, an extra power supply chip for the higher voltage, extra dissipation, cooling… not worth it. Lowering that requirement to 5W or less would mean many external drives not working properly.

The same reasoning applies to USB. A standard USB port must supply 0.5A continuously at 5V – 2.5W. The new MacPro and the latest revisions of the laptops (including the Air) support a special high-power mode where one port can supply 1.1A (5.5W). This was meant originally to allow the keyboard to work as a powered hub, supplying the regular 0.5A on each of its ports. The Air probably needs it for its external DVD drive, although the USB Developer Note says this only works for the keyboard – and supposedly the Air’s external drive doesn’t work on other Macs. Time will tell, but here too an extra USB port would have meant beefing up the machine, though not as much as a FireWire port would have.

Somewhat more puzzling is the limitation of the 80GB 1.8″ drive, as there are larger drives sold in iPods. Either Apple is already supply-constrained for those, or the slight differences in thickness and power consumption are significant; in any event, I expect the Air’s next revision to offer larger drives. Same for RAM; coming back to the pictures of the main board, notice there’s no space for extra RAM chips, meaning that 4GB will only be possible when the next chip series doubles capacity. (And a RAM socket? With a door? Forget it.)

Finally, all this is a great opportunity for acessory makers; expect a 4-port USB hub (powered, of course) with built-in gigabit Ethernet and media slots, for instance. Even for Apple itself, it might be interesting if Time Capsule allowed a plug-in DVD drive for remote access; it would just mean a firmware update, but I suppose the Air’s drive would be too much for the Capsule’s power supply.

kiltbear wrote:

I think it could quite easily be the primary machine for a decent sized share of the market. I think we geeks forget about how most normal people operate. Surf, email, sync the iPod nano or iPhone. For the “average” user, I think a MacBook Air (with external optical), Time Capsule, and iPhone offers an easy to use elegant combination that will meet most all of their needs.

True, but wouldn’t such a “normal person” be equally well served by a MacBook, at less cost? Not that I remember what such a person is like…

Now that the specs are out, some fast comments on the MacBook Air.

I think most complainers about missing features are seriously mistaken; they’re thinking it’s a replacement for the current MacBook and MacBook Pro lines (and if it were, they’d be right). But it’s a matter of demographics. The Air is perhaps the first Mac specifically designed as a secondary machine – though I suppose it might be OK as a primary machine for some small segment of the market.

The comments remind me a lot of the reactions to the Smart ForTwo car. It just seats two people, its luggage space is very small, it’s not ideal for long trips, and (at least here in Brazil) the wheels are too small for driving on the usually bumpy/potholed roads and highways. But that’s comparing it to larger cars, which makes no sense. As evidenced by its success in Europe, there is a market for it that usual cars can’t even compete in. I’d buy one (or two) if I could afford it – as they’re imported, they’re actually more expensive than locally-built full-size cars.

See, the market for the Smart is very specific. It’s an excellent second car for urban commuters – no sense firing up the family’s large car (or [shudder] SUV) just for driving to work or to the grocery, or for dropping the kid off at school; at least if it’s one kid only. It’s great for people who need to rent a small car for a few days in a foreign city; inexpensive and easy to park. Childless professional couples would get two.

Same thing applies to the MacBook Air. My main working machine is an iMac G5 with a second display; getting a little old but still usable. Every couple of days I copy my working folders to my laptop (currently a PowerBook G4), work on them somewhere, and return in the evening and copy the changed files back. I also use the laptop on trips, mainly for a similar purpose.

Now this is quite different from the days where that PowerBook was my main working machine; then, I needed (and got) maximum RAM, the largest hard drive on the market, lots of interfaces, and a DVD drive. Now, I need very little of that: a good screen, a normal-sized keyboard and a network interface (which can be wireless) is enough for me. I don’t need speakers (headphones are OK), audio input, or even an optical drive.

So, the MacBook Air is aimed right at my demographic. In other words, it doesn’t substitute or update the existing MacBook/Pros; it’s a machine for a specific segment that didn’t have a “lightweight” model directly aimed at it.

I’m glad I didn’t post anything before the just-finished keynote. From my point of view, the only interesting part was the MacBook Air; looks like a great machine for traveling with. So, back to work…

Very interesting post over at the online photographer:

…Canon introduced three coupled tilt-shift lenses for the EOS system, a 24mm, a 45mm, and a 90mm.

…I was told that Canon expected to lose money at least on the 90mm, and that probably all three lenses would never earn back their development cost.

What? So why make them at all?

Because, I was told, the availability of the three tilt-shifts would serve as an enticement for pros thinking of switching systems from Canon’s main competitor. The company would never make any money on those specific products, but it would make money from all the other products those “switchers” would buy after they switched.

OK so far, but now read this:

Once, I ran into an even more fascinating phenomenon: a photographer who had switched to Canon because of the tilt-shift lenses, but who hadn’t actually bought any of the tilt-shift lenses!

What was that about? “I just like to know they’re there,” he told me, “so I can buy them if I want to.”

Does this sound familiar…?

Steve Jobs just said (I guess I should say, Real Steve Jobs, hehe) on his blog:

…We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February.

…Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. …we believe it is a step in the right direction.

This seems to indicate that the application installer – which will in all probability be iTunes – will check if the application is properly signed. Whether they’ll allow developer-signed apps is anybody’s guess, but I wouldn’t rely on it. (Signed apps is one of the 300 Leopard features, by the way. I’ll comment on the Leopard day announcement in a few days.)

I wrote two weeks ago:
Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

Conclusions:

– the current generation of iPhone/iPod touch will remain closed forever, just like the first generations of iPods; (I was wrong there, and a good thing too!)

– an SDK is likely to come out only after everything (especially the hardware) has stabilized;

So the February OS X version will be the first one with stable, public APIs… meaning current apps, written to reverse-engineered specs, will probably have to be seriously rewritten.

Rainer Brockerhoff wrote:

– Apple is unlikely to invest efforts into implementing TrustZone in the current generation, unless Moorestown (or whatever else they might adopt in the future) has a similar security feature – and maybe not even then

Now I wonder how they’ll handle such a hypothetical future hardware migration… probably fat binaries, with the “other” executables being stripped out by iTunes when installing an app; this would be the most flexible without upping memory footprint on the phone side.

Update: Seems that Intel and ARM are collaborating on new TrustZone implementations… might that foreshadow TrustZone on Moorestown…?

Now, some people say this proves that Apple is listening to complaints and that they’re changing their original plans; on the contrary, I think this had been the plan all the time, but the Leopard delay also delayed the SDK. Regarding the timing of this announcement, this might be a trial balloon to see if they can minimize the inevitable profit-taking after next week’s earnings announcement. Hopefully that will happen.