MacPrices.net

Should Apple Build A Redesigned Plastic MacBook?

Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2009

by Charles W. Moore

Almost from the moment Apple wowed us last October with the introduction of the unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro, especially the 13 inch versions, pundits have been predicting that the old polycarbonate- bodied original MacBook was living on borrowed time -- reduced to just one last lonely model from the previous three, with a 2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor

Most of us thought Apple would continue building the white MacBook (the black model was immediately discontinued) for a few months at most as a transition machine until the aluminum unibody model got established in the marketplace and proved to have no serious issues. I figured that the old MacBook might stay on until January, 2009 or so as a sub- $1000 price leader, then be quietly phased out, possibly to be replaced with a bare-bones version of the unibody MacBook at the vacated $999 price point.

Didn’t happen.

Instead, Apple surprised us by rolling out a substantial upgrade of the polycarbonate MacBook on January, 21, making it, as I observed at the time, arguably representing the most power and features and best value for dollar spent that Apple had ever offered in a notebook.

Most importantly, gone was the original MacBook’s most crippling Achilles’ Heel: the old, anaemic Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics chipset -- replaced with a state-of-the-art Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chipset using 256MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared system memory that had been introduced with the unibody MacBooks three months earlier, graphics support finally powerful enough to allow the plastic MacBook to support 3D games and applications. That alone would have been cool enough, but it was just for starters. The whiteBook also got a faster, 1066 MHz frontside bus (up from 800 MHz in the preceding model}, the same 2.0 GHz Penryn Core 2 Duo CPU with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed used in the then current base unibody MacBook, plus 2 GB RAM standard instead of the former 1 GB, and it was still offered at the same $999 price point.

Way cool, but surely that would be the end of it.

Wrong again.

Fast forward another five months to May, and Apple, with no fanfare, updated the entry-level MacBook yet again, quietly upgrading its Core 2 Duo processor clock speed from 2.0 GHz to 2.13 GHz, adding 40 GB of standard hard disk capacity taking it from 120 GB to 160 GB parity with the base unibody, and also upgrading its RAM specification to 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM as opposed to the 667MHz RAM used in the outgoing version, albeit still slower than the more expensive aluminum unibody MacBook’s 1066-MHz (standard RAM. Standard RAM capacity remained at 2 GB.

I’ve stopped predicting what Apple might do next with the MacBook. I haven’t a clue. Of course obviously I didn’t before, but I thought I had things sized up a lot more neatly than turned out to be the case. However, last week Appleinsider’s Kasper Jade reported that unnamed sources familiar with Apple’s product development plans are telling him that the 13-inch plastic MacBook is at present actually undergoing undergoing an industrial design overhaul that will result in the introduction in a few months of a a slimmer, lighter plastic enclosure than the current MacBook design, which actually is a development of the dual USB iBook form factor originally introduced in May, 2001, and that the price leader notebook will get reengineered internal architecture as well.

This is of course a rumor, but if it turns out to have substance I think Apple is making a wise decision. Here’s why.

Firstly, the plastic MacBook remains a popular seller in the extremely price-competitive education market. The question is begged as to whether a somewhat less richly featured 13 inch aluminum MacBook Pro would not sell as well, but it may be one of those “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” dynamics in play here. In a rough and tumble education environment, especially at the grade school level, the slightly flexible resilience of the the tough acrylic composite polycarbonate case may well prove more scratch and scuff resistant, at least in terms of cosmetic concerns, than the unibody’s solid anodized aluminum.

Second, plastic is simply an excellent material for laptop computer enclosures. Aside from the points referenced in the previous paragraph, many people prefer the warm, smooth, and softer, more flexible tactile feel of polycarbonate to that of anodized aluminum. Being an aficionado of “real” industrial fabrication materials, I squirm a bit admitting this, but I prefer the feel of my old plastic-bodied Pismos and other plastic laptops to the metal contact surfaces of my PowerBook G4 and unibody MacBook.

Don’t get me wrong. The unibody is a feast for the eyes, and also the fingertips as one runs them over its contours carved from a solid billet aluminum and feels the precision fits of its components. It really is beautiful, essentially a piece of fine industrial design sculpture. But plastic has a more friendly feel. It is much less volatile and extreme in temperature fluctuations, unlike aluminum, which tends to get uncomfortably hot, when it’s hot uncomfortably cold when it’s cold and is rarely just right -- at least for long.

And off course there’s price, which we already touched on in the discussion about education market appeal, and which has to be a factor in today’s economy. Molded polycarbonate just has to be, other factors being equal, a substantially cheaper industrial material for laptop enclosure manufacture than water jet-carved solid aluminum. Kasper Jade noted in his article that the white MacBook is outselling all other Macs except for the iMac in Apple’s online store and that high-volume resellers like MacMall consistently rank the MacBook among the top 10 best selling Apple-related products overall, and ahead of all desktop-based Macs. It would be difficult to make a rational business case for terminating your best-selling computer model.

I would like to be able to say that a fourth factor would be the ease of molding polycarbonate in black as well as white, but notwithstanding the fact that a black MacBook redivivus would almost certainly be a brisk seller, and really shouldn’t cost any more to manufacture than a white version, I’m skeptical that Apple would want to make a black one available again for fear of cannibalizing sales from the more expensive unibodies, being as Cupertino managed to spite logic and reason in the consumer market space by pitching the erstwhile black MacBook as an upscale model based primarily on its color and a few modest hardware specification enhancements compared with the white versions.

In a research note to clients cited by Fortune’s Apple-watcher Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Barclays Capital Analyst Benjamin Reitzes, who has raised his Apple stock price target to $208 from $188, said he believes the MacBook line needs to be revamped, and expects to see new MacBooks before the end of the year that are still priced below the low-end unibody MacBook Pro 13” which currently sells for $1,199.

Some commentators are suggesting Apple might be shooting for some product rollouts, possibly including redesigned plastic MacBook’s timed for introduction in a major Apple sales event on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) in late November. You may recall that last November, Apple broke with its tradition of not holding sales by offering some relatively modest one-day price discounts on Black Friday 2008, something they may be planning to expand on this year.

If Apple does unveil a redesigned plastic MacBook, and I hope they do, we can also hope that it will retain a core 2 Duo processor, the NVIDIA 9400 M. graphics chipset, FireWire, and perhaps even get a SD Card slot. I expect that if they bring forth something like that, it will continue to be a robust seller.

CM