"they already use fairly exclusive materials for their hardware"
What, exactly? As someone who has used an iPhone 3, 4S, iPad 3, and many other mobile devices, I'm really struggling to think of a material that is "fairly exclusive" to Apple.
They have their own aluminum alloy made specifically for the phone. Custom plastics, dyes, colors, etc. They've got enough scale/buyer power to optimize to the n-th.
Not to mention that the A-series processor is Apple only, they get early access to the best screens, etc.
Not to mention they use forging instead of casting for the aluminum bodies, and have their own white paint formula (most manufacturers don't even bother trying to make white devices). Plastic was still the norm for PCs until the "Ultrabook" wave came along.
Not sure the white paint is relevant, there are quite a few white androids (most notably the HTC One X, which in my opinion is the best looking phone on the market).
White paint is probably irrelevant, but the important part is white paint formula. I own One X but it is not as clean-looking white as iPhone or iPad (it looks somewhere around #FFFFF6, if iPhone's white is considered #FFF). It's still a very good looking phone, though.
Haha - this actually goes for most products, but Apple is crazy at this type of thing - buying CNC machines by the 1000s at a time...
To be honest - I think a lot of it isn't the right direction for product design - it's designed to be HARD to match, so I feel like a flanking maneuver is required in industrial design to start new aesthetics that will drive different ways of manufacturing that are most accessible than Apple's current methods.
Haha - this actually goes for most products, but Apple is crazy at this type of thing - buying CNC machines by the 1000s at a time...
To be honest - I think a lot of it isn't the right direction for product design - it's designed to be HARD to implement, so I feel like a flanking maneuver is required in industrial design to start new aesthetics that will drive different ways of manufacturing.
Yea, well you have to think about what they're optimizing on - I'm sure that you can equal them on some things - but holistically you can't do it for a competitive price. Apple improves where it gives the most bang - and right now they're not really in a "specs war".
They don't play the commodity game - they market on new features, not better - even the better screen was a "First time ever Retina level" where they introduced PPI as a new metric
> What, exactly? As someone who has used an iPhone 3, 4S, iPad 3, and many other mobile devices, I'm really struggling to think of a material that is "fairly exclusive" to Apple.
I think he means "fairly exclusive material usage". There's not many high-end smartphones from Samsung/HTC/LG/etc. that have aluminium frames and/or bodies. The new Nexus phone by LG does appear to use glass on the back though, which seems nice.
> I'm really struggling to think of a material that is "fairly exclusive" to Apple.
Elithrar's reply hit the nail on the head, but in some cases they do use some fairly exotic materials. For instance, the bead-blasted high-tensile stainless steel antenna array (iPhone 4 & 4s) and artificial sapphire crystal lens coating on the latest iPhone. Both required new manufacturing processes and a considerable amount of hardware to work at scale.
What, exactly? As someone who has used an iPhone 3, 4S, iPad 3, and many other mobile devices, I'm really struggling to think of a material that is "fairly exclusive" to Apple.