Machines meeting the MacBook Air’s specification can be built cheaply enough; Apple’s managing it, and Intel’s price estimates probably aren’t too far off. But they require a different approach to PC building. For example, Apple’s laptops use custom-sized lithium polymer batteries. These allow Apple to make the battery exactly fit the space available, maximizing battery life and minimizing space, but there’s a downside of sorts: Apple can’t use standard battery modules. Similarly, the MacBook Air uses a highly integrated motherboard, with almost all functionality built-in. This makes the board smaller and cheaper to produce, but it means Apple doesn’t offer a wide range of processors, GPUs, WiFi adaptors, etc.
Apple has changed the way it builds systems. The company has boasted about it, in fact; when Steve Jobs talked about the unibody construction process used since late 2008, he was, in effect, telling the PC world “we’ve made this kind of investment—catch us if you can” (and so far, the PC companies can’t). In 2010 he made the challenge again when he claimed that “We think all notebooks will look like these one day.”
Apple didn’t achieve this overnight; it was the result of close cooperation with its supply chain (changes driven by Apple’s new CEO, Tim Cook), greater vertical integration, a deliberate policy of not shipping a million different models, and an absolute willingness to offer premium products at premium prices. That’s why Apple, and only Apple, can now make the MacBook Air and sell it for $999.

Posted on September 5, 2011 at 8:49pm.

Machines meeting the MacBook Air’s specification can be built cheaply enough; Apple’s managing it, and Intel’s price estimates probably aren’t too far off. But they require a different approach to PC building. For example, Apple’s laptops use custom-sized lithium polymer batteries. These allow Apple to make the battery exactly fit the space available, maximizing battery life and minimizing space, but there’s a downside of sorts: Apple can’t use standard battery modules. Similarly, the MacBook Air uses a highly integrated motherboard, with almost all functionality built-in. This makes the board smaller and cheaper to produce, but it means Apple doesn’t offer a wide range of processors, GPUs, WiFi adaptors, etc.
Apple has changed the way it builds systems. The company has boasted about it, in fact; when Steve Jobs talked about the unibody construction process used since late 2008, he was, in effect, telling the PC world “we’ve made this kind of investment—catch us if you can” (and so far, the PC companies can’t). In 2010 he made the challenge again when he claimed that “We think all notebooks will look like these one day.”
Apple didn’t achieve this overnight; it was the result of close cooperation with its supply chain (changes driven by Apple’s new CEO, Tim Cook), greater vertical integration, a deliberate policy of not shipping a million different models, and an absolute willingness to offer premium products at premium prices. That’s why Apple, and only Apple, can now make the MacBook Air and sell it for $999.

—Peter Bright is lamenting the fact that he can’t buy the PC equivalent of a MacBook Air, and doesn’t seem likely to be able to any time soon. It’s a long, somewhat meandering piece, but this bit really nails where the hardware industry is right now. Apple spent the past decade not only building the best computers in the business but building the best process in the industry. It’s a long-term investment that’s now starting to pay off in spades – they now have a manufacturing process that no one else can touch, which lets them build not just the best computers but to compete, head to head, on price.