Steve Jobs to be remembered with a Statue in the National Garden of American Heroes
Foxconn gets go-ahead for new factory in Vietnam
Apple’s next MacBooks could ditch Aluminium for Titanium & Polymer.
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Steve Jobs to be remembered with a Statue in the National Garden of American Heroes
Apple founder Steve Jobs will be memorialised in a National Garden of American Heroes along with hundreds of others once completed. “The National Garden will be built to reflect the awesome splendour of our country’s timeless exceptionalism” according to the Executive order.
Among the other states to feature in the garden, set to be competed by July 4th 2026 are:
Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Kobe Bryant.
Foxconn gets go-ahead for new factory in Vietnam
Foxconn has been granted a new license for a $270 million plant in Vietnam in order to diversify away from its China heavy operations. The plant is expected to be building MacBooks and iPads for Apple after urging Foxconn to move some of its production out of China in November last year.
The plant is thought to be able to produce 8 million devices each year, and represents 10,000 new jobs to be created this year.
Apple’s next MacBooks could ditch Aluminium for Titanium & Polymer.
A patent has been published (info via Patently Apple) last week covering MacBooks and iDevices using a Titanium base with polymer or glass coverings. It wouldn’t be the first time Apple has used Titanium in Notebooks, as in 2001 Apple released the Titanium PowerBook G4.
Titanium is a great material for a notebook, with a better strength to weight ratio than plain old Aluminium or polymers. Together though, some more of our previous rumours and patents could be coming to fruition.
Apple for quite a while has had a number of patents around charging iPhones and peripherals wirelessly, but of course, with an aluminium chassis, its been pretty hard to understand how this could work, as the patents showed these items charging by the palm rest. With this patent added into the mix, it seems Apple could use this polymer coating over the surface, there could be a different but colour matched material under the clear polymer layer that is far more transparent to the electrical field for charging.
In the past one of the big issues with having a polymer layer over metal has been adhesion, how to keep the layer attached. In this patent, a process of creating tiny pores in the Titanium is described, essentially creating a keyed surface that the polymer can combine with to keep it attached well to the metal surface. This polymer can also be used as a dielectric material to reduce electromagnetic interference as well as to insulate splits between different parts of the frame.
There is also mention that the pores in the titanium could absorb colour pigments before the polymer coating is applied, so this could indicate that coloured MacBooks may make an appearance, though whether it would be beyond the current space grey and gold options outside of standard silver is yet to be seen.
So in summary, we could be looking at M1X powered MacBook Pro that are lighter and thinner than before, according to other reports with Mini LED displays, better 4k FaceTime cameras, FaceID, with a flat based and topped design that looks pretty similar to iPad Pro in new colours that can also wirelessly charge your iPhone, AirPods and more. Or, of course, not all of those things, but probably at least some of them. Its an exciting time to be a Mac fan.