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Apple hardware design coincidence?

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Re: Apple hardware design coincidence?

#21

Post by tesseract »

mitjak wrote: post #20
tesseract wrote: post #8

It could of course just be a coincidence... however I am reminded of the story about how the (new) Mini Cooper exhaust tip was modeled on the bottom of an aluminum beverage can, because the designer happened to find one lying around when building a mockup, and afterwards no one saw any reason to change it. Maybe a designer traced their iPhone while working on an early sketch of the laptop, and then the detail just st…

But, the unibody MacBook design came well before iPhone 4?

The MacBook in question is the October 2010 redesign of the Air. It's conceivable that there were iPhone 4s (or prototypes of such) in the Apple design office at the time it was being designed.

Re: Apple hardware design coincidence?

#22

Post by StudyAnimal »

tesseract wrote: post #15
nhoss2 wrote: post #4

maybe they just like using a specific radius for the corners of their products

On a more historical note: http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/design/design2.html describes a design system for early Apple products that specified corner radii for various situations.

That is a great site, thanks for the link!

Re: Apple hardware design coincidence?

#23

Post by jbrennan »

mitjak wrote: post #20
tesseract wrote: post #8

It could of course just be a coincidence... however I am reminded of the story about how the (new) Mini Cooper exhaust tip was modeled on the bottom of an aluminum beverage can, because the designer happened to find one lying around when building a mockup, and afterwards no one saw any reason to change it. Maybe a designer traced their iPhone while working on an early sketch of the laptop, and then the detail just st…

But, the unibody MacBook design came well before iPhone 4?

Then maybe the contour of the iPhone 4 was designed after the groove on the MacBook.

Re: Apple hardware design coincidence?

#28

Post by blackguardx »

modernerd wrote: post #5

Something to do with multiple Apple products being cut from the same sheet of aluminium to reduce waste, perhaps? From Ive's comments in the Objectified documentary: 'This is the bezel for the iMac. When we remove the aluminium from the display in the centre here, we actually take that material, and then we can make two keyboard frames from it.' [2min30 into this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdVG4LcoY4Y ]

Machining doesn't work that way. The groove in the laptop is done with a round nosed end-mill. It makes the rounded profile and creates lots of chips. Those chips are then melted down and made into something else by some other company.

Re: Apple hardware design coincidence?

#30

Post by tesseract »

blackguardx wrote: post #28
modernerd wrote: post #5

Something to do with multiple Apple products being cut from the same sheet of aluminium to reduce waste, perhaps? From Ive's comments in the Objectified documentary: 'This is the bezel for the iMac. When we remove the aluminium from the display in the centre here, we actually take that material, and then we can make two keyboard frames from it.' [2min30 into this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdVG4LcoY4Y ]

Machining doesn't work that way. The groove in the laptop is done with a round nosed end-mill. It makes the rounded profile and creates lots of chips. Those chips are then melted down and made into something else by some other company.

Machining still doesn't work that way, but on the Air the cutout goes all the way through so there is no need for a round nose mill specifically.
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