The Snowball Effect

Rainer Brockerhoff on the bizarre complaints from Japanese engineers that the MacBook Air uses too many screws to hold the keyboard in place:

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.

★ Saturday, 23 February 2008