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Why You Can't Manufacture Like Apple
HughPickens.com writes Medium reports that although many startups want to design something that mimics the fit and finish of an Apple product, it's a good way to go out of business. "What happened when Apple wanted to CNC machine a million MacBook bodies a year? They bought 10k CNC machines to do it. How about when they wanted to laser drill holes in MacBook Pros for the sleep light but only one company made a machine that could drill those 20 m holes in aluminum? It bought the company that made the machines and took all the inventory. And that time when they needed batteries to fit into a tiny machined housing but no manufacturer was willing to make batteries so thin? Apple made their own battery cells. From scratch." Other things that Apple often does that can cause problems for a startup include white plastic (which is the most difficult color to mold), CNC machining at scale (too expensive), Laser drilled holes (far more difficult than it may seem), molded plastic packaging (recycled cardboard is your friend), and 4-color, double-walled, matte boxes + HD foam inserts (It's not unusual for them to cost upwards of $12/unit at scale. And then they get thrown away.). "If you see a feature on an Apple device you want to copy, try to find it on another company's product. If you do, it's probably okay to design into your product. Otherwise, lower your expectations. I assure you it'll be better for your startup."
Those many different models are often just variations.
It's always fun trying to read a service diagram for Toshiba laptops. The diagram is of a hypthetical super-laptop that contains the intersection of all the components of the various models that use that chassis - it'll have a flash drive and an HD fitted in the same bay, two devices in one mini-PCIe slot, and so on. You open it up and find that the diagram shows three wifi antennas, but the model you are working on only has one. Screws are especially fun, as it'll sometimes show two screws going into one slot. You get use to it after a while.
We are a small family farm.
We're building our own USDA/State inspected meat processing facility - almost done.
I designed the facility myself from scratch.
We have done all the construction of our building.
We will do all the work in the facility ourselves.
We built much of the equipment for our butcher shop, mostly out of stainless steel.
We built many of the tools to build the above equipment.
We invented techniques, tools and processes to do what we need to do.
More people need to innovate.
It is quite doable.