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How Well Designed is the MacBook Air?

Industrial Design
Posted by DT
Mar 11, 2008
(4 comments)

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macbook air wires

Guy Kawasaki, has a poignant picture of the realities of using the MacBook Air. Heck, this IS the reality of using all electronic products, not just the MacBook. Good design should include wire management, unfortunately it rarely does.

Via: How to Change the World


macbook air internals

In other news, check out this interesting article on how a bunch of engineers from Nikkei Electronics Teardown Squad took the Mac Book Air apart and analysed it. Their conclusion was the MacBook Air was “No Waste Outside, Nothing but Waste Inside.” Very interesting, especially the follow up commentary and explanation on why they used term “Waste”.

Via: Nikkei Blog


Edit: oneSaint from Digg has pointed out that “Some are more equal than others”. Thanks oneSaint!
mac_vs_windows_cord_clutter.jpg




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Comments

Jim Rait
Mar 12, 08 – 11:22 pm

We should not be surprised at the use of the term ‘waste’ in a design or manufacturing context… in Japan it is a very venerable concept and we designers should know about it. Jim Womack wrote an interesting take on it here: http://www.leanuk.org/articles/mura_muri_muda.pdf which is worth raeding and reflecting on. When we were designing an injection moulded component we realised that we need a quick tool to prove the aesthetic concept… the buyers ordered a production tool giving the quick tooled component as a model to be replicated… it was 20% heavier than an optimised design (which we had developed in Mould simulation software). As production was low no manager wanted to risk the change… It became incredibly popular and 7 years on is still 20% overweight as it is too expensive to retool…makes you wonder… read this and reflect how it applies to PCs:
http://www.atkearney.com/shared_res/pdf/The_Line_On_Design_S.pdf

DT
Mar 13, 08 – 9:18 am

Hi Jim,

Great story, thanks for sharing.

Adam
Mar 14, 08 – 8:53 am

Hi Jim,

I noticed this problem in the Apple store someone was using the MacBook Air and everytime she pressed a key on the keyboard it would jerk up and down on the table. In its favour it’s amazingly light to carry!

Also could you tell me what plugin you used for related posts - could you email me the file please? ;)

Niels
Apr 18, 08 – 4:58 pm

Nice article,

It is crazy how much materials get wasted. I liked the comparison in the pictures, nice.


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